24 ms·
New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
- bordercases 11y agoWhat a beautiful creature!
- Zenst 11y agoIndeed, had a look at a few clips and pictures and look and indeed traits remind me of a Fox more than it's genetic-background heritage. ADD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canidae most interesting compliment to this article
- vpribish 11y agoaww... I've have reached my article limit.
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y agoGoogle: Greater than the sum of its parts Hit the first link You're in.
- miander 11y agoI don't know if there's a rule against this, but here's a link to a Google search to let you bypass the paywall: https://goo.gl/AfoDnl https://goo.gl/AfoDnl
- prawn 11y agoIf it was against the rules, HN wouldn't include a link labelled "web" under the main article link for people to do exactly this. ;)
- miander 11y agoAhaha, I can't believe I didn't notice that! Thanks for pointing that out.
- prawn 11y agoI think it's a reasonably recent addition (last few months). You can also click the domain suffix after an article title to see all pages submitted from that source (e.g., all articles from The Atlantic, etc).
- kqr2 11y agoJust click on hn's web link and then read the article through google.
- aryehof 11y agoThanks for pointing that out. I never knew one could do that.
- oh_sigh 11y agoAlternative to Google: open in incognito mode
- davidw 11y agoThe Economist is worth the subscription. You know how you often read about something you know in the media and think ... "if they are getting this wrong, what else are they getting wrong?". I've noticed it happens quite a bit less with The Economist, and they write about a fairly broad range of subjects.
- eigenvector 11y agoQuite the contrary, in writing concisely about a broad range of complex topics the Economist often passes off opinion or conjecture as fact and analysis. Compare their writing on the domestic politics of any country besides the US and UK to that country's own media and you will find it disappointingly shallow.
- ascorbic 11y agoWhereas most other US/UK media don't cover the domestic politics of other countries at all. It not that surprising that it's not comparable local media. When they have such a broad coverage in a single weekly magazine there's no way they can match the coverage of media in that country, and this applies to the US and UK too. However this doesn't mean that their analysis is weak or that their perspective isn't useful. It's just that there's no way it can be in the depth of media that cover it every day. As for passing off opinion as fact, that's not passing-off, it's just the house style which is opinionated in the news stories as well as leaders. This isn't something they try to hide. The Economist is useful if you want to have an opinionated round up of the world's events, as well as regular long form special reports on topics in more depth. In particular, their editorial position is one that is uncommon in many countries.
- igravious 11y agoAccording to http://store.economist.com/FAQ.aspx http://store.economist.com/FAQ.aspx > The Economist is published weekly, 51 times a year, with the Christmas double issue remaining on sale for two weeks. The issue is dated Saturday and goes on sale each Friday. I know from reading it semi-regularly that it comments on significant economic/political developments from around the globe. It does this by breaking the world in regions (Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas) and then choosing to the stories from that region. Elections, power struggles, wars, economic fortunes, social/political movements, biographical sketches. The Economist also has special features on a weekly basis that cover global topics in depth, could be Bitcoin one week, renewable energy the next, the €zone crisis another week, also scientific topics. By necessity (because it is published weekly and because its scope is global) the regular news stories are not in depth but I wouldn't therefore call them shallow. They are condensed is the word I'd use. Maybe they lose a bit of nuance but that's understandable. When they do scientific and technical articles I find that their fact-checking and research seems to frequently attain a very high quality. People have commented on this feature of The Economist here on HN. Only The New Yorker seems to be more fastidious. What you call opinion or conjecture is actually their editorial stance§. The Economist is unashamedly biased. They believe in the free markets and I would say have a very liberal (in the British/European sense of the word liberal) philosophical outlook. They often defend their values. To have values is to be biased. What's worse I think are publications that report the news and pretend they're unbiased, when you can tell they're not either by sins of omission or misreporting whether deliberate or not and slanted recounting. § I personally don't share their worldview, I am more socialist than they but I recognise that disagreement on values isn't the same as that "well, that's just, like, your _opinion_ man"
- gricardo99 11y agoAnd part human! (Come on it's almost Halloween)
- codezero 11y agoCheck out Nature: Meet the Coy-wolf if you have Netflix (presumably in the US only) Also, available here: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365159966/ http://video.pbs.org/video/2365159966/ (not sure if region restricted, sorry) This page has a bunch of other resources: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/8605/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/8605...
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoRegion restricted to me in UK. However there's this "news" report on the PBS doc being made, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd18fLEf_Cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd18fLEf_Cw which includes excerpts.
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoOne outcome of this interbreeding is that these animals have lost their fear of people, but they retain their predatory instincts, making them quite dangerous. There are coyotes in the northern part of Nova Scotia that have attacked lone hikers. A woman was killed, in fact a few years ago, and there have been numerous scary encounters in which the animal creeps closer and closer to a wary human, much like a predator approaching its prey. The coyotes in this part of Canada are said to have interbred with dogs; it's not clear that these are the wolf-coyote-dog hybrids described in the article, but anyway these animals harassing hikers have been hanging out in the forested national park, as wolves would do. Park rangers have tried to control the population, with varying results. Simply shooting a few of the coyotes actually can backfire; it seems to stimulate larger litters to replenish the population. We might have to return to the pioneer approach of shooting them on sight, and hope this instills a healthy fear of humans as they once had. It's good having them around, because they control the rodent population which is a vector for disease bearing ticks and other problems. We just don't want them stalking our children in the local park.
- jobu 11y ago> We just don't want them stalking our children in the local park. Exactly. I'm all for conservation, so long as it doesn't lead to humans becoming part of the food chain again.
- igravious 11y agoSharks kill humans annually. So do big cats. And snakes. What are we going to do? Shoot all these on sight? Predate to extinction (and not even for their nutritional value) those species that harm us in even the slightest way? I oppose that. No thanks. That's not the type of world I want to live in. I want to co-exist with these amazing creatures, not drive them to extinction, or only have them alive in captivity.
- jmnicolas 11y agoThis kind of reasoning is fine until YOUR child get killed ...
- transfire 11y agoTechnically not a new species, rather a new subspecies.
- mhartl 11y agoThis issue is addressed in the article: Whether the coywolf actually has evolved into a distinct species is debated. Jonathan Way, who works in Massachusetts for the National Park Service, claims in a forthcoming paper that it has. He thinks its morphological and genetic divergence from its ancestors is sufficient to qualify. But many disagree. One common definition of a species is a population that will not interbreed with outsiders. Since coywolves continue to mate with dogs and wolves, the argument goes, they are therefore not a species. But, given the way coywolves came into existence, that definition would mean wolves and coyotes should not be considered different species either—and that does not even begin to address whether domestic dogs are a species, or just an aberrant form of wolf. In reality, “species” is a concept invented by human beings. And, as this argument shows, that concept is not clear-cut. What the example of the coywolf does demonstrate, though, is that evolution is not the simple process of one species branching into many that the textbooks might have you believe.
- igravious 11y agoThis puzzled me as well. Do we not have a word for this? Is _subspecies_ really the word? In linguistics mutually intelligible but distinct `languages' are called dialects. Similarly is there a term for mutually interbreedable but distinct `species'?
- epochwolf 11y ago> Similarly is there a term for mutually interbreedable but distinct `species'? It's species or subspecies. Animal classification has always been a little bit fuzzy and has some legacy cruft laying around. Like wolves, coyotes, and dogs are distinct animals with different behaviors but are definitely capable of interbreeding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies For domestic animals, we have the noun breed, as in breed of dog.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI find these stories intriguing. Several have come together over the last decade or so, this one, the bear hunt in Florida because of too many bears, the Burmese Pythons in the Everglades eating everything, mountain lions living in many parts of the Bay Area near people, the rat explosion in NYC. All wildlife finding a niche in the urban and suburban world we've created and retaking territory originally ceded during an aggressive hunting and trapping phase of our existence. Once we become the hunted what then? We have not yet seen these animals predating on the homeless but I expect it's only a matter of time.
- robbrown451 11y ago"Once we become the hunted what then?" Then they will be wiped out like every other large animal in the history of the world that has significantly threatened humans. Next question?
- dalke 11y agoThe Burmese Pythons in the Everglades don't fit your pattern. The Everglades is neither urban nor suburban, the pythons live in areas that were never really settled by people, and of course the pythons are not native so are not 'retaking'. And it's hard to say anything about NYC's rat problem as there are no good estimates of the rat population. The generally held belief has been one rat per person, but a statistician recently argued that there are only two million. Quoting further from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/nyregion/8-million-rats-in-new-york-data-suggest-that-legend-is-flawed.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/nyregion/8-million-rats-in... : > The health department says its efforts have paid off. “We have seen an overall decrease in the number of active rat signs throughout New York City,” Levi Fishman, the deputy press secretary for the department, said in an email. > How much of a decrease? Mr. Fishman said that “there are no scientific methods for being able to accurately count the number of rats in New York or any large city.” Similarly, Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is well steeped in the battle against rodents, said it had never quantified the rat population living in the subway system. Instead, I suggest a possible bias to your information sources: everyone has cameras, and takes pictures of everything, so the number of rat-related videos has gone up. You bring up 'the homeless'. As a reminder, many of those people living and killing animals in the 'aggressive hunting and trapping phase of our existence' did not do so from homes, so I don't think that's the relevant characteristic.
- mhartl 11y agoIn a parallel development, a hybrid pigeon, hawk, and roadrunner—the "pigeawkrunner"—has emerged in the same environments as the coywolf. Reports that the coywolf's attempts to catch the pigeawkrunner frequently backfire, resulting in deadly if amusing rock-falls, are as yet unsubstantiated.
- posnet 11y agoI saw that story, I think it was on the same site that had the piece on the Midwest entrepreneur who recently closed a successful round A for his oversized magnet company.
- richmarr 11y agoSounds like a great time to make a move on the smart anvil market
- lifeisstillgood 11y agoThat's the company that the WSJ described as "profits that seemed to hang in the air, before falling off a cliff"? Associated Coyote Magnetic Enterprises - was that the name? What was their stock symbol?
- igravious 11y agoTheir stock ticker symbol was a rather odd one, wasn't it? At least I found it so. I still don't understand it. "HELP!" I think it was.
- chiph 11y agoThey have really diversified in recent years, making lateral moves from blacksmithing tools to large-diameter springs, and then into rocketry. They truly are a company that makes everything.
- godgod 11y agoA new species resulting from human destruction of wildlife.
- joeclark77 11y agoNever heard of these being called "coywolf", but it's been known for a while that eastern coyotes are partly mixed with wolves. Good for them, too. Western coyotes are kind of wimpy. Now if we could breed the coyote with various bears, North America might start to rival Africa for impressive and fearsome predators.
- jrapdx3 11y ago"Western coyotes are kind of wimpy." Not around here. In Portland, Oregon, in the west hills <2 miles from downtown and the Willamette River, we are witnessing a marked increase in coyote sightings, and scary interactions with humans. In the last few weeks we've seen coyotes 2 to 3 times a week during daylight, curiously almost always around 3 PM. Until recently it was rare to see coyotes at all. They are fond of rifling through the contents of garbage cans. We now use extra layers of "security" to prevent coyotes getting into the trash. They are bold, fearless and evidently numerous. A couple of days ago a coyote was wandering up our driveway when my wife was nearby pulling weeds. Of course, she got out of the way. Based on its direction I was concerned it might go into the garage, dislodging it from there could be a big problem. Fortunately that day the coyote headed elsewhere. However people have become alarmed to the extent a neighborhood meeting is scheduled next week to consider options. There's serious concern about safety of small kids in the area, and really I can understand that source of worry.
- joeclark77 11y agoIs it legal to shoot them there? (The coyotes, not the small kids...)
- __david__ 11y agoCoywolf isn't a very good name—I think Wolfote rolls off the tongue much better.
- leroy_masochist 11y agoIt's becoming more of a problem in northwestern Connecticut for sure.
- GigabyteCoin 11y agoSo this is why we have been noticing exponentially more "coyotes" roaming around the suburbs of the GTA recently? My girlfriend was walking our dog last week and saw 3 of them within an hour. The next morning she saw 2. The other day I was walking the dog and some kid stopped me to warn me about a "wolf" that was growling at him around the corner. This is all within steps of our small "downtown" and I just kept thinking how strange it was to see so many of them in such a short period of time. I have lived here all my life and I don't think that I have ever seen a single "coyote" in the flesh. Looks like it's time to start carrying some pepper spray on my usual dog walks? The thought of watching some wild animal devour my dog (or me) is terrifying.
- robk 11y agoIn Grand theft auto? Huh??
- rudi-c 11y agoGreater Toronto Area
- kasey_junk 11y agoI live in the heart of Chicago, not the suburbs at all & there are coyotes all around my place. The feral cat & rabbit population has plummeted & I wouldn't leave a small dog out at night. That said they stay pretty far away from people.
- shostack 11y agoWonder what would win. Coyotes or a Chicago possum.
- anon4 11y agoPepper spray? Are guns outlawed in Canada? Why not just shoot it on sight?
- GigabyteCoin 11y ago
- frozenport 11y agoThe wolf, dingo, dog, coyote, and golden jackal diverged relatively recently, around three to four million years ago, and all have 78 chromosomes arranged in 39 pairs.[6] This allows them to hybridize freely (barring size or behavioral constraints) and produce fertile offspring.
- PepeGomez 11y agoFour million years is recent? We split from chimpanzees three to six million years ago.
- Squarel 11y agoYes, it is recent. We are evolutionary newcomers.
- coldcode 11y agoI don't think chimps can breed with humans however.
- frozenport 11y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- infimum 11y agofrom wikipedia [1]: > Coyotes are closely related to eastern and red wolves, having diverged 150,000–300,000 years ago and evolved side by side in North America, thus facilitating hybridization. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf
- rwhitman 11y agoIn eastern Los Angeles, coyotes are everywhere, to the point where in some areas you run into them constantly day or night. They're stealthy - silent and very calculating. You can tell many of them are part domestic dog and they don't seem phased by proximity to people and appear to understand the workings of the city to some extent. I have seen the mentioned looking both ways when crossing roads, and also use of sidewalks. Coyotes are very good at not calling attention to themselves when needed. In fact I lived next to a den of them in LA for years and never heard a peep, despite seeing them staking me out from my neighbor's roof in broad daylight, testing the perimeters of my house more than a few times. The thing is they're smarter than we give them credit, adapting to the man made environment and expand territory very quickly. We talk about controlling their population but they can parry - adeptly skilled at out-maneuvering people. Hold eye contact and you realize even though they look like a little dog, they're not your friend - they're studying you. The speed at which they're expanding territory and where they're headed on the East coast now, is interesting. Growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania we never saw coyotes really, but in the last few years I'm hearing lots of stories about them from family. And now even here in NYC they're making an appearance as well. The coyote / dog mix in LA seemed to not only have adapted to urban areas but use it to their advantage. Now add wolf to the mix and drop them in the environs of bountiful woodland and endless suburban sprawl of the eastern seaboard, what happens? If an apex predator were to adapt into becoming an anthropocene survivor species, a prerequisite would be having intelligence enough to outwit humans. A species partly forged in human company, with increased intelligence, that uses our own environment as an advantage, and can hunt and eat us. Oh and reach full maturity in about a year. They may seem cute now, but give them a few generations and they might not be so cute any more.
- robbrown451 11y agoIf they are really as stealthy as you say, the last thing they will do is be aggressive toward humans. From an evolutionary perspective, I can't imagine a worse strategy than hunting and eating humans.
- creshal 11y ago> From an evolutionary perspective, I can't imagine a worse strategy than hunting and eating humans. Being an aphrodisiac according to traditional Chinese medicine probably tops that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Houshalter 11y agoHybridization is super interesting from an evolutionary perspective. Two populations can evolve down very different paths. Evolving all sorts of new genes and adaptions. Then hybridization mixes it all up. And over time, the best combination of genes from both species will be selected for. Creating something more fit than either of the original species.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoNot so fast with the evolutionary fantasies. If they can breed and produce fertile offspring, are they really different species? Maybe we've got the definitions wrong somewhere.
- dwc 11y agoIf you change "species" to "population" in the parent comment everything still works.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoYes, but is it evolution or simply adaptation within an existing framework?
- Scarblac 11y agoWhat would be the difference, in your view?
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoEvolution would be a change in the genetic foundation of that whole framework that makes an individual thrive in the environment. A change so big that it would ultimately lead to speciation. Adaptation is done using existing mechanisms, with no new genetic changes besides the usual background noise. It never leads to speciation.
- cpfohl 11y agoI live (and grew up in) in Central New York (as in: middle of Upstate New York). We've had "coydogs" as long as I remember. I sort of assumed it was a myth, in fact I remember being told it was a myth and that they were just plain coyotes. Then again, the kids also claimed that they were faster, smarter, and would hunt humans...so there was definitely some mythology going on.
- iamthepieman 11y agoused to go out with two of my brothers in the fields near our house in northern Vermont. The grass was chest height on a full grown man with some shorter spots where clover or ragweed or shorter grasses had taken root. We would hear the coyotes howling over the ridge and go to the middle of the field and call them. When they crested the ridge to investigate we would crouch down really low on all fours with our eyes down. They would creep up on us with two or three going off to our flanks. When they got close enough we would stand up, wave our arms and hoot and holler, scaring them off. It was probably foolish for many reasons but we were in our late teens or early twenties and thought that a three on three mano-e-pata match was no contest in our favor. We didn't do this often but it happend more than once.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sarciszewski 11y agoSomewhere on the Internet, a furry just gained yet another fursona. > LIKE some people who might rather not admit it, wolves faced with a scarcity of potential sexual partners are not beneath lowering their standards. Oddly appropriate. EDIT: Nevermind, looks like they have at least 3 years on this joke: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/9465519/ https://www.furaffinity.net/view/9465519/
- duskwuff 11y agoLet's just say that Furry Twitter is having lots of fun with this news story.
- sarciszewski 11y agoHeh. My only contacts in Furry Twitter happens to be Infosec Furry Twitter. :P
- fumar 11y agoThere is a great PBS Nature episode on the Coywolf. There is footage of these animals leaving in close proximity to humans near major cities. Link:http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/8605/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/8605...
- deadprogram 11y agoFascinating. I have had a number of urban close encounters with coyotes in the west US, and the prospect of a similar animal but with less fear of human is certainly concerning.