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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The artricle that Frank Carbone had sent me a couple weeks back about the 104 pound canid that a forensics lab had identified as a coyote is being questioned by many...................see the pic below...............Missouri Coyotes are Western Coyotes(C.latrans) and weigh in 20-35 pounds...................this 104 pound "monster" is a wolf if there ever was one................I wish the hunters had not bagged this guy.................but obviously a "frontiersman" wolf wandering out of Minn/Wisconsin/Michigan and seeking new territory...............your thoughts??????


Missouri wolf or coyote, take two

Several days ago I blogged that the Missouri Department of Conservation had announced an animal shot by a hunter in November was a coyote and not a wolf has had been believed. DNA evidence was credited for the identification.
Missouri wildlife officials said DNA evidence shows this animal shot during their recent deer season is a just a large coyotes.
Missouri wildlife officials said DNA evidence shows this animal shot during their recent deer season is a just a large coyotes.

Several readers, though, say there's no way an animal that reportedly weighed 104 pounds can be a pure coyote.

They have a point. Take a look at the photo.
I've seen a lot of coyotes but none that were half the size of the animal in the photos sent to me by a mutual friend of the deer hunter who pulled the trigger.
(At the time, he thought he was shooting a coyote. He called a local game warden as soon as he  saw the animal's size and appearance.)

Does that look like a coyote to you? Me neither.

A little research shows it could be a wild wolf with some coyote DNA in its gene pool.--most of the Eastern Wolves in the Great Lakes States(C.lupus x lycaon) show some coyote genes..........a canid soup with more northern and western gray wolves(C.lupus) mixing with C.lupus x lycaon) which in turn has has hybridization turns with C.latrans and C.lycaon x latrans(Western coyotes and Eastern coyotes)...........confused, so what?  enjoy the ever changing wolf/coyote evolution going on in our midst--blogger Rick 
Wolf, coyote or hybrid? It's a rare and huge midwestern coyote that makes it to 50 pounds. This animal was more than twice that size.
Wolf, coyote or hybrid? It's a rare and huge midwestern coyote that makes it to 50 pounds. This animal was more than twice that size.

It's possible the animal is any sort of mixture of a wolf, coyote, domestic dog hybrid.
None of the above would be out of the question.

Pure wolves have wandered as far south as Missouri from packs around the Great Lakes.
Wolf/dog hybrids are sold as pets.

But sorry, MDOC, I'm not buying that it is just an abnormally large coyote based on the photos.




 
 

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