Coyotes

As I mentioned in my Cinderella blog, I like coyotes. I like the biological animal and the mythological figure. I like that they're one of the only critters expanding their range in North America (well, not that they are one of the only ones, but I like that they're doing it). Granted, I've never raised sheep, but I've never had an infestation of field mice in my grain fields, either.

Anyway, this is not strictly about my interest in coyotes, but about something I learned because of it. Like I said, they're expanding their range. From the American southwest, they've spread north well into Canada, and, as some of you may have heard a couple of years back, they sometimes come knocking here in New York City.

What I did not realize is that eastern coyotes are not quite like their western forebears. The western coyote, so I understand, is a 20-30 lb. animal that subsists mainly on insects, small reptiles, rabbits and rodents. Plus whatever cats and chihuahuas they can get a hold of.

Well, the eastern coyote, it turns out, has been regularly turning up specimens upwards of 60 lbs., and a few of 70+. In some places, whitetail deer have become a significant part of the diet.
There was speculation for awhile of these being "coydogs" -- coyotes interbred with domestic dogs, potentially dangerous if they inherited from dogs a lack of fear of humans. But while recent genetic testing showed interbreeding had occurred in eastern coyote populations, it found almost no trace of dog.

What if found was wolf.

Apparently, coyotes have been interbreeding with Canadian gray wolves, and passing that DNA on down the line. The resulting animals look like coyotes, but are much larger. They still have much of the same social structure of coyotes, living in non-hierarchical groups rather than packs, but they are nevertheless starting to hunt larger game, and in places are essentially taking over the ecological niche left vacant by the near nation-wide extermination of wolves.

Neat, huh? Well, not to everyone. It has some ecologists worried. They don't like the idea that the animals are not "real wolves," and worry that they'll have to be removed before wolves can be reintroduced to the areas.

Here's my beef: nature is not a museum. These animals represent the reintroduction of wolves. An amazingly swift, holistic, low-impact, ecological reestablishment of a lost species. This is life doing what it does best; adapting and exploiting. That they do not match the previous wolves gene for gene is irrelevant; if they continue livin' la vida lobo*, the wolf phenotype will gradually become the dominant. Leave it the hell alone, nature is repairing itself better than Zoological Society programs can.

If there were ever evidence of the Gaia hypothesis (of which I'm skeptical, it was a very 70s/early-90s idea), this is it; the use of a highly adaptable, genetically compatible carrier species to, in a matter of a century or two, recreate a species that was lost, over a distance of hundreds (if not thousands) of miles. Hell, someone should write a book on this.

*Yes, I know this is probably grammatically wrong. If you require this disclaimer, get a life.