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These adorable wolf-coyote hybrids are taking over the Northeast

Jennifer Welsh
Updated
2016-02-25T13:11:00Z
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Charles Moreau Photography

Whether we know it or not, humans have a huge impact on the natural world.

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Take this one recent example as a case in point: The evolution of the coywolf — a hybrid of the coyote and the wolf — which is also called the Eastern coyote.

According to The Economist, the hybrid population has reached more than a million and has spread over the entire north-east. 

Coywolves have infiltrated cities, and moved outward in every direction from their parent species' territories. 

Here's everything we know about them. 

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Coywolves, like the one below, have a completely new genetic makeup from their parent species: About one-quarter of their DNA comes from the wolf and two-thirds comes from the coyote. The rest of their DNA comes from domesticated dogs, mostly German Shepherds and Doberman Pincers, a 2013 study suggests.

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Michel Soucy snapped this image on a drive through the Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia. Michel Soucy

Source: Molecular Ecology.

Scientists think this intermixing began with wild wolves in southern Ontario about a century or two ago. As humans cut down wolves' forest homes and hunted them, the lack of available partners for wolves led them to search elsewhere for mates. This led them to coyotes and dogs.

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Charles Moreau caught this coywolf pup in Alberta, Canada. Charles Moreau Photography
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The coywolf success is astounding scientists. Their genetic features are a mix between those of the urban coyote and the stronger, pack-hunting wolf. Here's the coyote, which traditionally populates cities, weighs up to 75 pounds, and has pointy features.

Urban coyote in a park
flickr/Dru Bloomfield

This is what a wolf looks like. Wolves are usually bigger, weighing in at about 100 pounds. They tend to prefer more wild habitats than the city-slicker coyote.

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A wolf at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery center in West Yellowstone. Flickr/Dennis Matheson
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The grey wolf and the coyote are close relatives, but between one and two million years ago, they separated into distinct species.

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An eastern coyote —the wolf-coyote hybrid — in West Virginia. Forestwander.com

When two species form a hybrid — even if it's between two closely-related species — they typically don't survive as well as their parent species. But the coywolves seem to be an exception. Though these hybrids have been around for a few centuries, they've only really emerged in force during the last few decades as their numbers mount. This is probably because they have a few advantages over their parent species.

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Randy Droniuk caught this coywolf lounging in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Randy Droniuk
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According to The New York Times, coywolves "can be as much as 40% larger than the Western coyote, with powerful wolf-like jaws; [and have] also inherited the wolf's more social nature, which allows for pack hunting."

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Two coywolf pups in Alberta, Canada. Charles Moreau Photography

Source: The New York Times.

The wolf genes allow them to take down large prey, while the coyote genes let them adapt to cities and other populated areas. They even follow railroads into cities, making themselves scarce during the day by adopting a nocturnal schedule. They even look both ways before crossing the highway.

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Charles Moreau Photography

Source: The Economist.

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To study the hybrids, scientists mated wolves with coyotes in the lab to make 50/50 hybrids. The pups weren't exactly wild coywolves, but they allow researchers to study the hybrids even better than they could if they watched them in the wild. Here's what a lab-bred coywolf looks like.

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Scientists created these offspring by mating female western coyotes with male western grey wolves. journal.pone.0088861.g002

The researchers actually had some trouble — the first few tries were unsuccessful. But eventually six pups were created, showing that it is possible for the two species to create viable offspring, which likely was a big part in creating the coywolf.

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PLoS ONE
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Surprisingly, the interspecies mixing has created hybrids with their own distinct sounds — taking the wolves' howl and the coyotes's yipping and turning it into a "yip-howl."

You can hear the yip-howl about 45 seconds into this camera-trap video, uploaded to YouTube by simplenotme:

It turns out that these animals are even better fitted to our changing world than we believed. Their proliferation has been more "rapid, pervasive, and transformational than once thought," according to The Economist. We'd better get used to having them around.

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A hybrid 50/50 western coyote and wolf, bred in captivity. PLoS ONE

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