The Coywolf

(from the conversation.com)

The eastern coyote now cohabits New England with us human folks.  Over the years, we've seen two coyotes on our property during daylight.  The coyote is a mixture of coyote and wolf, though the degree of interbreeding is still debated.  The literature says that the eastern coyote is quite a bit heavier than its western cousin, averaging about 1/3 more in weight.  That's certainly consistent with THC's own observations.  During the past two years, he's encountered coyotes on three occasions while walking his dog in the Phoenix area, and all of them were smaller in stature and scrawnier than what he's seen passing through his yard in Connecticut.

The presence of this coyote/wolf animal (with some mixture of domestic dog genes) in the Northeast, which only began in the 20th century, has prompted a scientific debate over whether these creatures are best classified as a subspecies of coyote or as a totally new species, the coywolf.  You can find an interesting discussion on this topic at The Conversation.com.

All this, of course, leads to the bigger question: Will The Wolf Survive? as presented by Los Lobos.