Coydog?
 

Seen this on another Hunting site. Guy who shot it says it weighed close to 60 pounds. He thinks it may be a Coyote-Dog mix. I cant tell. What do yall think?

In which state was it killed?

Doubtful. Coyote's only breed in pairs, and during the winter. Not to mention when they encounter dogs they either try to run away, or eat. So, mixing the two would be hard to accomplish in the wild.

It might be wolf blood. As the ears don't look quite coyote like to me.

As M Finn said, it may be a wolf/coyote cross. Research has shown it is doubtful there are coydogs but they have lots of DNA evidence of wolf/coyote hybrids. One of the reasons coyotes in the northeast are larger than the western coyote.

https://www.google.com/search?site=&....0.cAcdVObzMoc
don't think either one is particular if the time is right, reproduction is an instinct, ya think a buck won't breed a doe cause she's ugly?
RR

Top center looks more like an African wild dog. Coyotes pair up before they breed. Domestic dogs are more hit and run. But if it did happen a female coyote would have a real hard time raising pups on her own. They are smart, but they only know what coyotes know.;)

ATB

+1

LOL !!!

Nature at work....................

Very possible, look @ the ears...

approxiamated intenet weights are often inaccurate. That coyote looks pretty much normal. Judging by the size of the ears in relation to the head, I'd venture to say that it is a young coyote. It surely lacks the "blockhead" and longer snout of a mature coyote.

News / Media
Eastern Coyote: Coyote, Wolf, or Hybrid?
International Wolf Fall 2008

Text and photos by Jonathan G. Way

The eastern coyote started to appear in northern New England and New York in the 1930s and 1940s and currently inhabits all of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.8 Fal l 2008 www. wol f . org Eastern coyotes (coyotes living in northeastern North America) have been an enigma to scientists and laypeople for many years. This coyote started to appear in northern New England and New York in the 1930s and 1940s and currently inhabits all of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, ranging from wilderness to urban areas. The animals are often described as a big version of a coyote or a small wolf, and many northern New Englanders still call them coy-dogs. Until recently, however, there was only speculation as to what this animal actually is. Now, emerging data have shed new light on this potentially distinct species.

I recently reviewed available data on coyote mass (weight) throughout North America and found that the coyote living in northeastern North America is indeed the heaviest version of coyote. It is clearly heavier than the nearest subspecies of coyote, Canis latrans thamnos, found in the midwestern United States. While size dimorphism was observed between sexes (males being heavier than females), which is consistent with observations of other Canids, eastern coyotes were so big that females from the Northeast were 21 percent heavier than male coyotes from outside that region. Furthermore, although Bergmann’s rule (i.e., larger size with increasing latitude) has been posited to explain the larger sizes of mammals in colder climates, findings from my study indicate that longitude (degrees west to east) accounted for greater than four times the amount of variation in coyote mass than did latitude.

Most of the studies in the northeastern United States measured coyotes heavier than 40 pounds, which are rare in other parts of the country. I radio-collared a 55-pound female eastern coyote on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, that traveled with more normal-sized (smaller) eastern coyotes. I tracked her for over eight years and documented her giving birth to six litters before she left her territory, becoming nomadic until ultimately getting shot.

Theories as to why eastern coyotes are bigger include response to enhanced food supply or larger prey, genetic adaptation to prey, or their being coy-dogs (that is, a coyote-dog mix). Most of the evidence discounts these theories since medium-sized food (mice and rabbits) and deer are abundant throughout the United States, and coy-dogs reproduce in fall and give birth in winter instead of mating in winter and giving birth in early spring, like the normal wild canid cycle.



The most plausible scenario is that the eastern coyote is actually a hybrid between coyotes and a small type of wolf. Dr. Brad White’s research team at Trent University reported that the wolves found in southeastern Canada may actually be the same species as the red wolf (Canis rufus, or Canis lycaon as proposed) found in the southeastern United States. This “eastern wolf” is smaller, weighing about 60 pounds, and is thought to be more closely related to the coyote than to the gray wolf because both are theorized to have evolved in the New World whereas the gray wolf originated in the Old World. Thus, White’s research group theorized that the genetic similarity of the coyote and Canis lycaon might facilitate hybridization, especially when populations are low in an area. (In fact, the biggest threat currently facing the red wolf in the southeastern United States is hybridization with coyotes colonizing the periphery of the North Carolina red wolf recovery area.)

I have been collaborating with White’s genetic team, and they recently finished analyzing the genetic results of about 75 of our samples from eastern Massachusetts. Perhaps not surprisingly, they did find evidence for hybridization. They found that our study subjects were mainly eastern coyote, but all also had western coyote and eastern/red wolf genetic influence as well. White believes the eastern coyote should be classified as its own species because all of the samples from the Northeast (including from Massachusetts, New York, Maine, and New Brunswick) grouped more closely to each other than to western coyotes or wolves. Interestingly, biologists call these same Canids “Tweed wolves” in Ontario, and White notes that they are a product of hybridization between eastern coyotes and eastern wolves.

We are still trying to sort through this “canid soup” and have found variability within study areas with some “coyotes” having nearly pure red/eastern wolf and others having much western coyote DNA. We will likely not be able to officially call the eastern coyote a new species until we sample throughout the Northeast and determine where they become less “eastern coyote” and more “western coyote” or “eastern wolflike.” However, it is obvious that the eastern coyote is indeed distinct when I compare the size and physical makeup of eastern and western coyotes; I see a more massive eastern coyote that looks very similar to the red wolves that have graced the covers of past issues of International Wolf.

Ecologically, this “coy-wolf” behaves as one might predict for a 30-to-40-pound Canid. On average, it has a larger home range than most western coyotes (but smaller than wolves, at about 10 square miles), it travels long distances daily (10–15 miles), it eats a variety of food including deer but focuses on medium-sized prey such as rabbits and voles, and it is very social (when not killed by people), often living in families of three to five members (note: western coyotes have also been found to be social where there is abundant prey). In short, it has ecological and physical characteristics that can be seen on a continuum of coyotelike to wolflike.

In addition to the eastern coyote, however, there have also been a number of apparently pure wolves that have made it to the northeastern United States in the past 10 to 20 years. These wolves seem to be either eastern, gray, or a hybrid of the two but have limited eastern coyote genes. Current wolf range in southern Canada is within 100 miles of the United States, a distance that wolves (or eastern coyotes) could travel in a week or two. Unfortunately, all of these wolves have been found dead before anyone could monitor them. Why is this the case?

Many believe it to be because northeastern states provide little protection to their similar looking cousins, the eastern coyote. All states have a liberal coyote hunting season, with most allowing unlimited, yearround killing. I have always found it peculiar that eastern coyotes, which look so similar to eastern wolves, are afforded virtually no protection while wolves are still on the endangered species list in the Northeast and are currently returning to the area on their own.

As a biologist studying the eastern coyote, I see an incredibly adaptable and family-oriented animal that is personable, social, sentient and an important member of the ecological community. I have a moral and ethical problem with the fact that most states (42 out of 49) treat them as vermin, especially since only a minority of people hunt, and wildlife watching is now a considerably bigger component of our economy.

The traditional wildlife management standpoint is that if a species is breeding and compensating for its losses, then so what if we kill lots of them? But just because coyotes can reproduce quickly does not mean they do not have feelings, for example, as when losing a mate. What if the mate is theirs for four or five years and then it is shot? I think these social, intelligent animals do feel loss. Accordingly, I believe very strongly that all states should have a strict bag limit on coyotes, which is in line with management for most wildlife species. Treating them otherwise sends the wrong message about the value of these animals both ecologically and aesthetically.

To add further ammunition to my argument is the issue of the wolf in the Northeast. We have a legal obligation to restore a species on the endangered species list to its native range. Many (including myself) now believe that the only way that wolves will likely return to the United States (either by natural recolonization or active reintroduction) is if they and their close kin (i.e., eastern coyotes) are better protected. How many more dead wolves (or large eastern coyotes) will it take to force people to pay attention to the fact that wolves are trying to recolonize the northeastern United States?

While state agencies have effectively chosen to do nothing to protect pure wolves returning to the Northeast (as they continue to die at the hands of people), we have also had the amazing opportunity to witness the literal evolution of a species, the eastern coyote, in the past 50-odd years. I look forward to continuing to study this amazing animal regardless of whether we fulfill our legal and ethical mandate to allow its larger cousin to return to the Northeast.

Jon Way is the author of Suburban Howls (see www.easterncoyoteresearch.com), written from a biologist’s perspective but intended for the layperson. The book describes his experiences and findings studying the ecology and behavior of the eastern coyote in urbanized Massachusetts.

References:


Jon Way’s Eastern Coyote Research Web site: www.easterncoyoteresearch.com.
Way, J. G. 2007. Suburban Howls: Tracking the Eastern Coyote in Urban Massachusetts.Dog Ear Publishing, Indianapolis, Ind.
Way, J. G. 2007. A comparison of body mass of Canis latrans(Coyotes) between eastern and western North America. Northeastern Naturalist 14(1): 111–24.
Way, J. G., and R. L. Proietto. 2005. Record size female Coyote, Canis latrans. Canadian Field-Naturalist 119(1): 139–40.
Reprinted with permission from International Wolf, the quarterly newsletter of the International Wolf Center

The picture can be deceiving, but that yote looks to be a good 15 pounds short of 60. I shot a male that weighed 39 1/2 pounds a few nights ago and judging by the picture, it was every bit as large, or larger, than what this one looks like. It looks to be full blooded coyote also. Coy dogs are not all that rare. It can and does happen in the wild. I followed coyote dogs for 50 years and have also trapped them hard.

Do you have any pics of Coy/dogs you could post.

ATB

head is very blocky, nose ain't pointed enough to be full yote, where was it shot? it looks smaller than a 50# coyote
RR

Only one way to know if an animal is a coydog and that is DNA. Anecdotal observations mean nothing. Not every animal of any species looks the same. The possibility of a coyote dog cross are very slim.

+1 RR and the ears are also definitely not a full blooded coyote. The guys that haven't heard of a coydog should google it and read up on them, as they are not real common, but definitely do occur.

I do not, but have personally seen one that was definitely crossed with a blue healer. NO DNA NEEDED. This was in Iowa, close to the Mississippi river. I had a rug from a very large Coy dog that was cauht by a friend with trail hounds in SW Missouri many years ago. There was a whole litter of them. That one was crossed with a large breed dog, perhaps a sheperd? The one I had the rug for was black in color, but some of the others seen in that group were different colored. I had the rug in my heated shop for several years. One of my dogs got loose in there and chewed it to pieces. It was torn to the point that I took it to the dump. There was a newspaper article that told of it and showed pictures. The Mo. DNR came to the unlikey conclusion that it was a Texas Red Wolf. Now you must remember that this was many years before DNA was ever heard of. I was given the rug after my friends death, but the newspaper article was never found by his wife. I have personally trapped a 40 pound black coyote. He was a large dominant male and I believe him to be full coyote, but not 100% certain. I also know of a red and black pair of yotes many years ago in this area. I saw them both together one day and put dogs after one of them, but did not harvest either of them. The black one was seen by several others that winter. I do not know whether anyone eventually shot it or not. These were in the begining times for coyotes in our area, so likely could have been coyote/dog crossed. I do have a pelt from a reddish colored coyote that I tanned myself. I caught it with one of my hounds perhaps 20 years ago. It is not the best of shape. Been hanging in my cabin. I'll see if I can take a picture of it. It appears to be full coyote, just colored wrong. That happens in nature. I have an orange colored coon and a coon that is mainly a gray with a snow white tail. I trapped both of those and have both of them mounted.

Black coyotes are not uncommon in PA, as well as red and other colors. The first one I have ever seen killed was a black in 1975. You guys are free to believe whatever you want, I will believe the researchers and a very good friend who did the coyote research studies in PA, that dog coyote crosses while not impossible are very rare and what most people call coydogs are coyote wolf hybrid several generations removed. Without DNA testing no one knows anything for sure except they are thriving.

I'm an old timer myself. I am not implying that coydogs are an everyday occurence. It happens. Coyotes were my game for half a century. I have hunted and trapped them from Northern MN. to the Arizona desert. I lived, ate and slept coyotes the same as many do the whitetail deer. I surely wish that I had a photo of the coyote/healer cross. It would be impossible to reach any other conclusion. I firmly believe the coyote pictired in this thread is just that, a coyote. For my money, it is no where near 60 pounds either. Block head, narrow head, whatever. We caught a coyote one time that was the longest bodied thing you ever saw. It's head was also very long and narrow, but it was a coyote. Not all humans have the same shaped head either :popcorn:

How true. With Mother Nature,anything is possible.

Tyme, not trying to start a personal argument, people believe what they believe. I am also not calling you a teller of untruths. Before DNA testing, everyone was talking about coydogs, some of the biologists leaned that way. As I said, the biologists have not absolutly ruled it out but say it would be rare. BTW, they have done some artificial insemination between dogs and coyotes in some of the research in order to have some kind of baseline. I am not a biologist, I have friends who are and since I buy a license and some of that money goes to salaries and research I have to believe what they are saying.:) I read somewhere that it would be difficult for dogs and coyotes to mate because there is a difference in the placement of the sex organs, I have looked at coyotes and I can't see the difference.

I'm not trying to argue either, just stateing what a lifetime in the outdoors has shown me. I have a good friend that is ADC. Between us, we have observed the out of doors far more than a vast majority ever will. I can tell you there are many over educated persons that have never put their time in, filling spots within our game departments. It is pure fact that dogs and coyotes can cross and that it sometimes happens. Fox and Coyotes cannot cross. It is genetically impossible.

Coydog
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species: Canis latrans x Canis lupus familiaris
A coydog is a canid hybrid resulting from a mating between a coyote and a dog. The term is sometimes mistakenly used for coywolves, which are common in northeast North America, whereas true coydogs are only occasionally found in the wild. This is due to the mating cycles of dogs and coyotes not coinciding, and coyotes are usually antagonistic towards dogs, with even captive specimens having shown reluctance to mate with them. Hybridization usually only occurs when coyotes are expanding into areas where conspecifics are few, and dogs are the only alternatives. Even then, pup survival rates are lower than normal, as dogs do not form pair bonds with coyotes, thus making the rearing of pups more difficult. Nevertheless, hybrids of both sexes are fertile, and can be successfully bred through four generations. Such matings have occurred long before the European colonization of the Americas, as melanistic coyotes have been shown to have inherited their black pelts from dogs likely brought to North America through the Bering Land Bridge 12,000 to 14,000 years ago by the ancestors of the America's indigenous people. Coydogs were deliberately bred in Pre-Columbian Mexico, where coyotes were held in high regard. In the city of Teotihuacan, it was common practice to crossbreed coyotes and Mexican gray wolves with dogs in order to breed resistant, loyal but temperamental, and good guardians. Northern Canada's Aboriginal populations were mating coyotes and wolves to their sled dogs in order to produce more resilient animals as late as the early 20th century.
In captivity, F1 hybrids tend to be more mischievous and less manageable as pups than dogs, and are less trustworthy on maturity than wolf-dog hybrids. Hybrids vary in appearance, but generally retain the coyote's adult sable coat color, dark neonatal coat color, bushy tail with an active supracaudal gland, and white facial mask. F1 hybrids tend to be intermediate in form between dogs and coyotes, while F2 hybrids are more varied. Both F1 and F2 hybrids resemble their coyote parents in terms of shyness and intrasexual aggression. Hybrid play behavior includes the coyote "hip-slam". A population of non-albino white coyotes in Newfoundland owe their coloration to a MC1R mutation inherited from golden retrievers.
Some 15% of 10,000 coyotes taken annually in Illinois for their fur during the early 1980s may have been coydogs based on cranial measurements. As the coyote population in Illinois at the time was estimated at 20,000-30,000, this would suggest a population of 3,000-4,500 coydogs in the state. Of 379 wild canid skulls taken in Ohio from 1982 to 1988, 10 (2.6%) were found to be coydogs. It was noted that that "The incidence of coydog hybrids was high only in areas of expanding, widely dispersed coyote populations."


***For those of you that are posting about this subject negatively, please do a google search and do some reading on the subject before you say anything more. There are even pictures of dogs actually coupled with coyotes during copulation on the net and one was in the above article that I just C/Pd here!

I very much agree with the highlighted portion above.

Thanks for the reply. I used to hunt coyotes quite a bit as well. We would get grey, blond, and reddish colored ones. But I never saw a black one. Though I've seen pictures of ones others have taken.

I did see a blond raccoon once too.

ATB

p.s. In another post you said all humans don't have the same shaped head. Isn't that the truth...:happy0157:

Top, if your post was directed at me, I never said coyotes and dogs cold not breed, I said it is rare outside having human help. The idiots in LA are known to tie a domestic bitch in heat up in the foothills hoping a male coyote would breed with them, I wonder how many got killed in the process. This is what I was trying to say more or less and I was not arguing with anyone but refering to the grand scheme of things that it is not common. no argument existed here, just a conversation!


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Urban coyote ecology and management, Cook County, Illinois



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Do coyotes and dogs interbreed (mate with one another)?







People often speculate as to the frequency of coyote-dog hybrids, or coydogs, in urban settings. Coyotes and dogs are related, and they are biologically capable of producing hybrid litters. Coydogs have been raised in captivity. Genetic surveys of wild coyotes have rarely documented evidence of dogs in the genetic makeup of coyotes, despite domestic dogs and coyotes sharing the continent for the past 9,000 years. Although it is possible, coydogs in urban settings are unlikely because:
•Coyotes are highly seasonal breeders; dogs are not.
•Coydog females have a shifted estrus cycle that does not coincide with the coyote period.
•Domestic dog and coydog males do not tend to litters, whereas male coyotes do.
•Coydogs may have lower fertility than either domestic dogs or coyotes.




















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Oldtimr---I think you know by now that if I wanted to direct a post to just you that I would have done so or put it in a PM!

OK sorry about that, I didn't see anyone else but me expressing that coydogs are not a common occurance so I took it as being directed at my posts.