![]() Many of these animals had extra teeth and dental crowding. They examined more than 400 eastern coyote skulls held in the collection of the State Museum of New York in Albany. ![]() students Lavania Nagendran and Christopher Kendall, and Rebecca Rogers Ackermann of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The research team on the project included recent UTM master's of anthropology graduate Natasa Zdjelar, current Ph.D. In an article published in the Journal of Morphology, students and collaborators of the Schroeder Lab identified several traits in coyote/wolf hybrids that are also found in other mammal hybrids. "There is not one 'coywolf," there are various pockets of hybrids of coyotes and wolves in different parts of the continent," explains Lauren Schroeder, an assistant professor of paleoanthropology at U of T Mississauga. So why would they be considered a canine hybrid and not a separate species? Coyote/wolf hybrids were first identified in the early 20th century, and they can successfully reproduce over generations. Media coverage has sometimes sensationalized the risk associated with 'coywolves' in urban and suburban neighborhoods, but these animals are not new. These canine hybrids live across a large swathe of northeastern North America, and they have DNA from coyotes, wolves and even domestic dogs. There are hybrid animals that produce fertile offspring, and grow into larger populations, but are not necessarily their own species.Ĭoyote/wolf hybrids are among them. It is a population of animals that can successfully reproduce. For decades, this was the basic logic used to define a biological species.
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