Virgo
Mind blown! I just discovered that coyotes are *possibly* new in the northeast!
Anglo Americans didn't know about coyotes until the Lewis & Clark expedition:
https://www.historynet.com/coyote-american-original.htm
They called it a "prairie wolf" and were puzzled on how it was neither wolf, fox, nor domestic dog.
Eastern coyotes weren't confirmed in the state of New York until the 1920s, and not in Massachusetts until the 1950s:
https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature...background
That's interesting, because when I was eight or nine, one of my great aunts who was from the early 1900s used to call my parents to ask if our dogs were barking at her house late at night and was always confused when my parents told her it was coyotes. They must have been new to her, and she possibly never saw them despite growing up close to nature on a farm.
No one really knows how long eastern coyotes have been around. They didn't start appearing in the northeast until the mid-1900s, although photographs of early extermination campaigns show canids somewhat resembling the eastern coyotes in Pennsylvania in the 1800s: https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Education/Wildlif...oyote.aspx
With the winters in New England and Upstate New York being extreme, it's possible that the warmer-climate smaller coyotes from the American west cross-bred with wolves in the Great Lakes regions, giving them the ability to survive in the harsh winters of New England, New York, and Canada. With apex predators like wolves and mountain lions being driven to extinction in the east from Anglo Americans, this would have created a vacuum for this new breed of canids to fill. Eastern coyotes are mostly coyote in DNA, put part wolf and part dog. The dog DNA however is more ancient than you think. The truth is, coyotes make better monogamous couples than humans do. Coyote dads help coyote moms protect and raise the pups. Because domestic dogs won't help a coyote mother raise her pups, contemporary coyote-dog hybrids usually don't survive long in the wild.
https://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/wildlif...oyote.html
https://www.nps.gov/articles/netn-specie...coyote.htm
Anglo Americans didn't know about coyotes until the Lewis & Clark expedition:
https://www.historynet.com/coyote-american-original.htm
They called it a "prairie wolf" and were puzzled on how it was neither wolf, fox, nor domestic dog.
Eastern coyotes weren't confirmed in the state of New York until the 1920s, and not in Massachusetts until the 1950s:
https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature...background
That's interesting, because when I was eight or nine, one of my great aunts who was from the early 1900s used to call my parents to ask if our dogs were barking at her house late at night and was always confused when my parents told her it was coyotes. They must have been new to her, and she possibly never saw them despite growing up close to nature on a farm.
No one really knows how long eastern coyotes have been around. They didn't start appearing in the northeast until the mid-1900s, although photographs of early extermination campaigns show canids somewhat resembling the eastern coyotes in Pennsylvania in the 1800s: https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Education/Wildlif...oyote.aspx
With the winters in New England and Upstate New York being extreme, it's possible that the warmer-climate smaller coyotes from the American west cross-bred with wolves in the Great Lakes regions, giving them the ability to survive in the harsh winters of New England, New York, and Canada. With apex predators like wolves and mountain lions being driven to extinction in the east from Anglo Americans, this would have created a vacuum for this new breed of canids to fill. Eastern coyotes are mostly coyote in DNA, put part wolf and part dog. The dog DNA however is more ancient than you think. The truth is, coyotes make better monogamous couples than humans do. Coyote dads help coyote moms protect and raise the pups. Because domestic dogs won't help a coyote mother raise her pups, contemporary coyote-dog hybrids usually don't survive long in the wild.
https://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/wildlif...oyote.html
https://www.nps.gov/articles/netn-specie...coyote.htm
![[-]](https://gayspeak.com/images/duende_v3_local/collapse.png)
