Supposedly, wolves and coyotes always hate each other.
And even though they can crossbreed and produce fertile offspring, we know that they never have in the wild.
So goes the reasoning behind the denialism that certain wolves in the Eastern Canada are wolves with some coyote ancestry.
But California’s sole wolf, which wandered down from Oregon last winter, seems to have not read all books.
He was recently spotted playing with some coyotes!
It’s very likely that relic wolf population in the East and Midwestern US– and yes, the South– were very willing to interbreed with coyotes as they gradually worked their way across the continent. There may have always been some small populations of coyote in the East, and these coyotes hooked up with the relict populations of wolf.
Wolves and coyotes likely only cross when wolf populations are heavily pressed. The two animals have very different body language, and normally, wolves kill whatever coyotes they encounter.
But this wolf is showing us what it may have been like for those remaining few wolves in the East as they encountered a swelling tide of coyotes.
See related posts:
- The creature formerly known as the “red wolf”
- No unique Eastern wolf species
- The dubious red wolf
- The junk science behind the red wolf
- America’s “park coyote”
I think we are going in the right direction to notice that these things happen in the wild and there is evidence that humans were involved in hybridding from time to time, as well. It makes me wonder if we didn’t create the barriers between present day wolves and dogs, by sending the uncooperative or fearful wolves to the wild while keeping the friendly, curious ones. Why could this not have happened with coyotes too? and with 3-way mixes as we now have in the NE?
Coyotes were always harder to tame than wolves.
But I’d say that they had the same sort of selection pressures that wolves experienced.
yes. We now put species in boxes and are surprised when genes get out of their boxes and show up in unexpected places. Species seem to be on a grand continuum with a great ability to cross breed with near neighbors and a lesser ability to breed with more distant neighbors, but it can be done when needed.
Are coyotes just in the new world? I guess they had less human pressure until the end of the Pleistocene. Amazing how receptive they are to being tamed and cross bred considering man is so new to them.
Coyotes are only in the New World, but they are closely related to golden jackals.
The world of Turkish and Central Asian dogs is complex, to put it mildly. Jess may weigh in on this. I just wanted to give you a URL: http://www.anatoliandog.org/isik-004.htm
There’s something there about a system of producing and using wolf hybrids. It’s folklore, for sure, but there may be some truth in it.
This is of a cloth w/ the African Wild Dog/Jackal association you highlighted in an earlier post.
This type of behavior probably occurs more often, at least in species which are ordinarily social, than is commonly recognized. As I recall, the Custer Wolf was known to roam in the company of two coyotes.
He was killed while running with a pair of coyotes.
A lot of things might have occurred because canids are both territorial and social. At maturity they disperse and go looking for they don’t know what. If they find an opposite sexed conspecific, then great, the species goes on. But if conspecifics are scarce, they may make friends with other species up to and including us.
Which is how we got dogs.
I suspect so. Was going to speculate on how that occurred, but deleted. Maybe the first ones born in man’s camp were forced, not to disperse, but not to disperse due to surrounding “wild” canids. That is they had no place to go.
I think you are onto something, Kathy!
Its my understanding–Scottie can correct me on this if I’m wrong–that coyotes don’t fit as well into a pack structure and are much less tolerant of each other than are wolves. Since the wolf is the larger species here, its probably much more likely a lone wolf will be able to come to an accommodation w/ a group of coyotes than the reverse.
That is what I have always heard, too. I wonder sometimes when they pack up at night and call out in our neighborhood. They sound like packs, all near each other, even in a bunch, sending up the same chattering, cacophony, Sound like they have a lot of parties! That noise they make isn’t really howling- what is it?