Coyote

The party continues! Today you get a double-dose of Monday Pets. Here's one from the archives. Later today, you can expect a new one. I often write about animals that the average person does not interact with all that much on a day-to-day basis. Today, I introduce something I like to call "Monday Pets". The focus of Monday Pets will be the animals that we intentionally bring into our lives as pets. Sometimes those animals are even considered part of the family. Ever notice some weird behavior that you notice your pets doing? Want to know more about it? Email me. Always wanted to know if your…
This article pointed me to this interesting paper, Rapid adaptive evolution of northeastern coyotes via hybridization with wolves: The dramatic expansion of the geographical range of coyotes over the last 90 years is partly explained by changes to the landscape and local extinctions of wolves, but hybridization may also have facilitated their movement. We present mtDNA sequence data from 686 eastern coyotes and measurements of 196 skulls related to their two-front colonization pattern. We find evidence for hybridization with Great Lakes wolves only along the northern front, which is…