Coy-What?

"Not dogs, wolves." That was the gist of what Canadian wolf expert Douglas Pimlott told me back in the 1970's when I asked hm about the "coydogs," supposed coyote-dog hybrids that were chasing deer around the New England woods. Although many of his colleagues disagreed, Pimlott was certain that the big, aggressive coyotes colonizing the Northeast were part wolf. Had he not passed away in 1978, Pimlott probably would be enjoying a prolonged "I told you so" moment. Genetic studies of eastern coyotes reported in 2009 and this spring confirm that eastern coyotes -- the critters howling just beyond our doorsteps at night -- indeed carry gray wolf genes. Some biologists have coined a new name for them, "coywolves," even suggesting they are a new species in the making.

Pimlott did err in one respect. The most recent study, co-authored by Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Roland Kays of the New York State Museum, suggests that as well as being at least nine percent wolf, eastern coyotes studied carried a similar amount of dog genes. Potentially, however, some eastern coyotes could be genetically as much wolf as they are coyote. Biologists believe that coyotes interbred with wolves as they migrated east through the northern Great Lakes region.

With some individuals as large as a German shepherd, eastern coyotes can be twice the size of their western counterparts. Skeletal evidence also indicates that eastern coyotes are morphing into coywolves. Their skulls are wider and more robust, their jaws stronger, an adaptation to killing and eating deer, rather than the rodents and other small animals that are staples for western coyotes. While western coyotes usually hunt individually or in twos and threes, our's hunt deer in packs. Not long after I talked with Pimlott, a friend of mine was chased by a pack as he rode his horse through Cockaponset State Forest. That alone erased any doubt about what Pimlott had told me abut the lupine link.

As if to put a bloody examination point on the scientific research, in 2009 two, perhaps three, eastern coyotes acted scarily wolf like when they attacked and killed a 19-year-old female Canadian folk singer on a trail through a Nova Scotia park. It was, scientists said, a deliberate act of predation.

Research led by Wayne and Kays has also scrambled biologists' view of another wild canid, the so-called eastern wolf of Ontario, found in the region of the Algonquin Provincial Park. Once thought to be the same species as gray wolves, the eastern wolf now is generally viewed as a separate species. Wayne and Kays suggest that they,too, are a mix of wolf and coyotes. Some experts strongly disagree.

Coywolves, wolf-coyote hybrids, or whatever you want to call them, the eastern coyotes are filling at least part of the niche long vacated by wolves in the northeast. Some of my fellow hunters don't like them. I think they are off base, that they just cannot stand the competition. I welcome the wild, eerie howling that rises in the dark of night from the woods beyond my home. If they are there, I walk with fear after the sun goes down.