Coywolf, no such thing

[Fox]

The only thing I got from this article is that the title is confusing and the author goes on to contradict himself.
I think it's clear that most people/biologists agree that coyotes and wolves have become "hybrid" over X-amount of years with some introduction of domestic dog tossed in.
It appears that the only thing interesting about this article is that the author just doesn't like the name attached to the species.
Does it really matter?

Dogs are descendant from wolves, so dogs share wolf DNA too, so the fact that there is a mashup makes perfect sense. The article is useless really, I am just saying that there are tons of different sub-species and variants of wolf around the world and they can be intertwined too.

I remember grandpa talking about growing up just outside the park, this would have been the late 30s. He said that they had small wolves, they called them brush wolves. They also had larger wolves, they called them timber wolves. He also said that they introduced larger wolves into the park, he actually drove the truck in to deliver them, this would have been the late 40s or early 50s. I do not believe the coyotes had made it to the park in the 30s and early 40s, so to me there were a small wolf, a large wolf and some introduced wolf. No biological evidence here but grandpa was not a guy who talked nonsense, his stories were never tall tales and he would tell you if it was something he thought vs something he saw.

[rick_iles]

We shoot a lot of coyotes. I have seen all different colour phases, from black to red. Some the same colour as a golden retriever. I’ve also seen some smaller yotes that have the finer features of an eastern coyote. I’ve also seen two or three each year that look more like a wolf, heavy body, huge feet and quite a bit longer than a regular coyote. They also have a similar head and muzzle as a wolf. A couple last year were too large to put on a coyote skin stretcher. There’s no doubt we are seeing different genetic variants. Call them coywolf or whatever...there is obviously a difference.
The posted article does contradict the no coywolf theory...I subscribe to the coywolf hybrid theory, only because of the animals I have actually laid hands on...

[terrym]

BINGO !!!

X2 ^^^

[terrym]

We shoot a lot of coyotes. I have seen all different colour phases, from black to red. Some the same colour as a golden retriever. I’ve also seen some smaller yotes that have the finer features of an eastern coyote. I’ve also seen two or three each year that look more like a wolf, heavy body, huge feet and quite a bit longer than a regular coyote. They also have a similar head and muzzle as a wolf. A couple last year were too large to put on a coyote skin stretcher. There’s no doubt we are seeing different genetic variants. Call them coywolf or whatever...there is obviously a difference.
The posted article does contradict the no coywolf theory...I subscribe to the coywolf hybrid theory, only because of the animals I have actually laid hands on...

The carbon taxes should clean up all those genetic stews right? Maybe JT will give a million dollar grant to Suzuki/CBC? That would help too.......

[smitty55]

I think the main point the author is making here is that there is always some domestic dog dna mixed in, none of the testing has found an animal with only coyote and wolf dna, hence the reasoning to not call them a coywolf.

[SongDog]

Domestic dogs are 99% wolf I remember reading somewhere.

I wouldn't doubt a male lone wolf shacked up with a few coyotes over the last couple hundred years.

Protecting these mutts because they are a "rare subspecies' is hogwash. They need managed like every other predator.

Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

[Horridfiber101]

Found the same data point as SongDog-
1. In general, the domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the grey wolf, from which it differs by only ~0.04% in nuclear coding-DNA sequence, and no dog [mitochondrial DNA] sequences have been found that show closer kinship to other canid species. This similarity is so profound that hybridization often occurs between dogs and wolves

[benjhind]

The science seems to line up pretty well.

All the BS and semantics layered on top are what don't line up. You can call the damn thing a "fruitloop" if you want. All scientists are in agreement that the damn fruitloop contains a lot of hybrid canid DNA.

[Crashman]

I saw that article a few weeks back, it is a good read. Not sure I agree or disagree with the author, but the one thing I took away from it that I can NOT deny is, I don't really care! Lets go shoot some coyotes! Or what ever they are!

[firedeptlt]

thumbnail_IMG_0115.jpgthumbnail_IMG_0116.jpgthumbnail_IMG_0117.jpgthumbnail_IMG_9563.jpgthumbnail_IMG_9565.jpg

This thing is massive. Very big prints ( palm sized ).