The red wolf:
I am not convinced that this is a separate species.
Even the microsatellite analysis merely suggests that wolves of Eastern North America are of an older lineage than those in the West. No surprise there. The wolves of the East would have had to have been the first wolves to come into this continent, simply because it would have taken them a longer time to disperse that far south and east. They likely were southern clade or primitive wolves, which goes a long way to explain why Indian wolves, the oldest extant subspecies, look so similar to red wolves.
My guess is these Eastern North American wolves were the first wolves to come across from Eurasia, and they came as dispersers. Unable to find mates in their own species, they merely bred with ancient coyotes and other wolf-like canids in North America.
I have seen no evidence that these wolves have very different behavior from other wolves. They form packs. They kill each other over territory. They snarl. Coyotes threat gape. In Minnesota, the wolves with “coyote” MtDNA sequences regularly pair-off with wolves that have normal wolf MtDNA.
Wolves mate with coyotes when only there are no other unrelated wolves with which they can form pair bonds.
Wolves with “coyote” MtDNA mate with wolves normal DNA far more often and far more easily than they ever do with modern coyotes. They regard each other as conspecifics, whether taxonomists do or not.
As coyotes moved East following the Eastern North American wolf’s demise, they added new coyote genes to the population, which makes all of this one giant taxonomic clusterfuck. Coyotes also gained wolf genes in this same scenario. The coyotes in my part of the world have some Eastern North American wolf ancestry.
But I am pretty sure that red wolves and all of those of Eastern North America are the same species as the other wolves.
Only when the Wolf Genome Project is finished will we have a definitive answer.
But that’s my hunch.
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Then I suppose the question is why don’t Western North American wolves interbreed with coyotes?
There is some evidence that Mexican wolves have interbred with coyotes, but their genes have only been found in coyotes.
However, majority of wolves in Western and Northern North America have never interbred with coyotes.
I think the real reason is that the wolves of Western North America are simply northern clade wolves that colonized North America much later than the original wolf colonization. Northern clade wolves, which I call the “big game hunting wolves,” are actually quite specialized animals that a relatively recent evolutionary branch.
Northern clade wolves are larger, and they probably came in large numbers. These bigger wolves wouldn’t mate with coyote, simply because they had other wolves with which they could mate. They are also much larger than coyotes, and size matters when it comes to canid reproduction. Chihuahuas don’t often mate with large dogs.
Also, one should note that not all wolf/coyote or dog/coyote hybrids are fertile. Many are fertile, but many are not. The wolves that have “coyote” MtDNA and most Eastern coyotes descend from fertile hybrids that bred back into the parent species. They are not hybrids as we understand them. They are animals that have had an ancestor of a different species in which then bred back into one of the parent species. They are the result of an outcross and then many generations of backcrossing.
In view of the literature on wolf evolution in North America, I think that these possibilities have to be considered.
I know that they don’t fit with the romantic view of the ancient red wolf of the Great Smoky Mountains.
But if red wolves and all of those of Eastern North America are a unique species, you would expect them to have some unique behaviors and body language that separates them from the wolves of Western North America and Eurasia. They don’t. Coyotes do, which is one reason why we know that coyotes are a different species.
There is so much about Red Wolves that is split right down the middle between Gray Wolves and Coyotes, that I believe they are just a naturally occurring hybrid that found a niche in the North American Southeast that for whatever reasons, they fit better than either “purebred” Gray Wolves or Coyotes. Older studies of these animals showed that where their ranges coincided with Gray Wolves, the border animals tended to be more “wolflike”, and where they overlapped coyotes’ ranges in the West, they were more “Coyote-like”–that to me seems rather significant. The whole deal with “Pure” Red Wolves in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina is mostly political hogwash, as it only came up when they wanted to do a release of captive Red Wolves in the park in modern times–old accounts describing the original animals seem to indicate plain old regular Gray Wolves present originally in that area–Red Wolves tended to be coastal or bottomland–perhaps marginal areas for the more dominant(at least in those days) Gray Wolves. I have been lucky enough to get to work with Red Wolves at the Zoo I work in–and my impression about them(and I’ve been around a lot of Coyotes and Gray Wolves, too), is that they are right between the other two, in behaviour, size, color and markings, and voice–if anything, their howling is much more coyote-like–just a few octaves deeper. But you get variances occaisionally–we have one 90 lb. bruiser of a male that appears MUCH more Gray wolf-like than coyote-like!
I think the original ones were much more wolf than coyote.
Check out Bruce Hampton’s Book “The Great American Wolf.”
There is a photo of a red wolf captured in Arkansas. Its jaws are bound, so the hounds can disembowel it.
It looks more like an Iranian wolf than a coyote.
This is probably true, and the Red Wolves we have now have more of the Coyote influence than they used to in pioneer days and before, when more Gray Wolves were around and were wider spread. The last so-called “pure” Red Wolves being captured for captive breeding were in Texas on the Gulf Coast, and this remnant was regularly “hybridizing” with the very populous local coyote population–a main reason they wanted to capture them for captive breeding–so they wouldn’t be swamped-out-of-existence by coyote genes–many animals were rejected for captive breeding as being too “coyote-like”. No doubt in the forested East before the European invasion, the Red Wolves had regular interactions with Gray Wolves but not coyotes, who were mainly Plains/Desert Western animals(according to all early accounts). So the “Pure” strain of Red Wolves we have now are likely much more influenced by their coyote genetics than Gray Wolf(if you believe they are natural hybrids, as I do…)–perhaps one reason the black color phase that used to be so common in the Red Wolves has dissapearred, since it is rare to non-existent in coyote populations?(okay everybody, don’t start rolling your eyes about me bringing up the black color phase thingy in wolves again–this is STRICTLY involving it no longer appearring in Red Wolf populations now, which is curious since it used to be so common in the animals–at least as common as in Gray Wolves–and is not in coyotes, FOR WHATEVER THE HECK REASON!!!). As the “Red Wolves” we have in the wild now have access to plenty of coyotes, but not Gray wolves, this trend will likely continue. It IS interesting how the wolf X coyote hybrids(i. e. “Brush Wolves”) from the Northeast U. S. are spreading South, and seem to be naturally “reinventing” a Red Wolf-type animal with zero help from mankind(other than inadvertantly providing good habitat and prey for such). Just as in “Jurassic Park”, “nature will find a way”! I’m all for their continued success and eventually incorporating the released population of Red Wolves of Eastern North Carolina, and the Red Wolf/Coyote hybrids in the Great Smokies National Park and surrounding areas, that don’t OFFICIALLY exist(but be assured, they ARE OUT THERE…..). However accomplished, end result–a large canine predator sorely needed by the ecosystem!
When I red about the Red Wolf, times ago, they said it is a wolf x coyote hybrid. Now, when I think about what you say here, it sounds very sound. If one is not a biologist, it is not easy to find new-thought and else updated information about American Wolves. Here we have one, thank you.