Interesting Coyote Article in NYTs

[Tom Rankin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/science/28coyotes.html

My favorite quote:

'Coyotes (or Canis latrans, meaning “barking dog”) and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and every kind of wolf, from the red wolf to the Eastern wolf to the gray wolf (Canis lupus), can mate and produce perfectly healthy pups. No wonder, then, that interactions among these species have led to a genetic mess that researchers sometimes refer to as “Canis soupus.” '

 

[Little Rickie]

So we could say the wolf has returned to the Adirondacks...just not the way people have been speculating? Funny how nature works.

 

[erugs]

Interesting. I was intrigued by the following from the story:

"Two separate teams of researchers studying the genes of coyotes in the Northeast reported evidence that these animals that have for decades upon decades been thought of as coyotes are in fact coyote-wolf hybrids."

It's something I've wondered about, as occasionally some coyotes I've spotted are huge creatures in comparison to others I've seen.

 

[DrewKnight]

It's something I've wondered about, as occasionally some coyotes I've spotted are huge creatures in comparison to others I've seen.

Definitely... I have noticed that the coyotes I see in the Whites are considerably larger than the ones I occasionally glimpsed in Hingham, MA, which in turn were bigger than anything I have ever seen out west (Joshua Tree, or even up north in the Grand Tetons).

The relative sizes, to me, have been:

Gray wolf (very large -- 100-lb malamute sized; only seen in captivity)

Eastern Coyote (White Mountains; size of a medium-sized German shepherd -- maybe 70 lbs)

Eastern Coyote (Coastal Massachusetts; about the size of Terra -- maybe 45-50 lbs)

Coyote (Joshua Tree, CA; bigger than a fox, but not a lot -- maybe 35 lbs)

Red Fox (White Mts -- for comparison's sake... maybe 20 lbs).

I wonder if the wolf-eradication programs of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries left a void in the Eastern ecosystem that made it easier for hybridization to fill the gap? Certainly seems likely that the availability of larger game in the Whites means we're seeing a bigger hybrid up here (at least in my anecdotal data).

 

[dentonfabrics]

Thanks for posting the article Tom. We've got an active coyote population around here and they're especially noisy in the fall and the spring. We hear them almost every night this time of year.