Coyote Color Variations

Mix it up
The eastern and red wolves showed no evidence of independent ancestry; their genomes could be explained solely by admixture between coyotes and grey wolves.

Previous, less comprehensive studies have found genetic and morphological reasons to recognise these wolves as separate species, and others have shown that they seem to be hybrids. Wayne’s study is unlikely to settle the matter. However, it is the highest-resolution look at the problem so far, says Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.

If Wayne’s team is correct, it could spell trouble for the red wolf. The US Endangered Species Act makes no mention of hybrids, so the red wolf might lose its protected status – and the millions of dollars spent on captive breeding and recovery programmes.

That would be unfortunate, says Wayne, because the hybrid red wolf’s small size may mean it is better adapted than a pure grey wolf to life in the south-eastern US.

“Maybe we can’t put a grey wolf in the American south-east,” says Wayne. “Maybe the top predator has to be a smaller wolf.”

The red wolf’s situation shows that the Endangered Species Act needs to catch up to reality, says Kays. “What we’re finding with today’s high-resolution genetic tools is that hybrids are everywhere,” he says. “To say it’s a hybrid, so it’s not worth protecting, just doesn’t work anymore.”

CNC looks like it may have to do with them coming out of their winter coats and putting on the summer coat

We seen a solid black one last week.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/209...-just-a-hybrid/

icducks.......I've seen one that looked anything close to that mounted one. That's pretty cool. It looks like it cross bred with a Corgi.

It actually looks real wolfy in the face? Do you mind sharing where it came from?

Look at how different these two yotes look. They were taken from the same property.

Is it true that western coyotes mixed with red wolves and we have hybrids of the two? Is the redder color variation in the one dog caused from that influence? Not only the color….but even the eyes seem to have a little different look about them. I just thought it was interesting how different they looked. Both are females.

Yote #1



Yote #2



Yote #1 again…….



Yote #2 again……

[quote=CNC]
I killed it about 1/2 mile from the city limits of albertville. Taxidermist said he was 99% sure it was crossed with a dog. Said he had never seen one like it. I shot it for a coyote at dusk and when I got to it thought I had shot someone's dog.

[Those seem pretty small. Is that the average size that you see?

Five of six were females in the 30-35 lb range give or take. I think the one male was young and not really much bigger. I’ve never really paid enough attention to it over the years while just hunting to be able to know if that’s big or small. The next time I’m in a sporting goods store I’m gonna get some digital scales so we can check out some of them and see what kinds of weights we’re all running.

It looks there’s the potential to have numerous blood lines in the lineage of the yotes running around our woods. When that book was published in 1909 it said there were no coyotes east of the Mississippi but identified numerous subspecies in the west overlapping a lot of wolf territory between here and there. The transition from what they had then to what we have now couldn’t have been a perfectly clean one. Just look at that thing icducks killed.