dragonsintheattic:

jenniferrpovey:

squealingfangirls:

andrusi:

barlowstreet:

thewinterotter:

animalsandtrees:

A new species is evolving before scientists’ eyes in the eastern United States.

Wolves faced with a diminishing number of potential mates are lowering their standards and mating with other, similar species, reported The Economist.

The interbreeding began up to 200 years ago, as European settlers
pushed into southern Ontario and cleared the animal’s habitat for
farming and killed a large number of the wolves that lived there.

That also allowed coyotes to spread from the prairies, and the white farmers brought dogs into the region.

Over time, wolves began mating with their new, genetically similar neighbors.

The resulting offspring — which has been called the eastern coyote
or, to some, the “coywolf” — now number in the millions, according to
researchers at North Carolina State University.

Interspecies-bred animals are typically less vigorous than their parents, The Economist reported — if the offspring survive at all.

That’s not the case at all with the wolf-coyote-dog hybrid, which has developed into a sum greater than the whole of its parts.

At about 55 pounds, the hybrid animal is about twice as heavy as a
standard coyote, and her large jaws, faster legs and muscular body allow her to take down small deer and even hunt moose in packs, and the animal
is skilled at hunting in both open terrain and dense woodland.

An analysis of 437 hybrid animals found that coyote DNA dominates her
genetic makeup, with about one-tenth of its DNA from dogs, usually
larger dogs such as Doberman pinschers and German shepherds, and a
quarter from wolves.

The animal’s cry starts out as a deep-pitched wolf howl that morphs into higher-pitched yipping — like a coyote.

Her dog DNA may carry an additional advantage.

Some scientists think the hybrid animal is able to adapt to city life
— which neither coyotes or wolves have managed to do on their own —
because her dog ancestry allows her  to tolerate people and noise.

The coywolves have spread into some of the nation’s largest cities —
including New York, Boston and Washington — using railway corridors.

The interbreeding allows the animal to diversify her diet and eat
discarded food, along with rodents and smaller mammals — including cats,
which coywolves eat skull and all — and they have evolved to become
nocturnal to avoid humans.

The animals are also smart enough to learn to look both ways before crossing roads.

Not all researchers agree the animal is a distinct species, arguing
that one species does not interbreed with another — although the
hybrid’s existence raises the question of whether wolves and coyotes are
distinct species in the first place.

But scientists who have studied the animal say the mixing of genes
has been much faster, extensive and transformational than anyone had
noticed until fairly recently.

“(This) amazing contemporary evolution story (is) happening right
underneath our nose,” said Roland Kays, a researcher at North Carolina
State.

Watch this report on coywolves.

Raw Story

THIS SHIT IS SO WILD AND IT’S ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING. If you’d like to watch the entire Nature documentary referenced in that “watch this report” link, you can find the whole thing on Youtube. It’s a terrific documentary and a really interesting look at an animal most people don’t even seem to realize exists. The extent to which coywolves have adapted to urban life and the ways in which they’re very distinct from the species they’ve sprung from is pretty incredible.

Okay but it kind of looks like it’s covered in maple syrup

coy wolf

this is furry feed stop making them stronger

Species being unable to breed with each other is false.

It comes from the fact that the species hybrid humans have historically had the most contact with is the mule – which is indeed sterile more than 99% of the time. (Fertile female mules – mollies – exist, but rarely. There are no records of johns (males) being fertile, but that may be because john mules are always castrated before puberty because they are extremely aggressive, worse than either stallions or jacks).

So, humans went “Horse + donkey = sterile. Therefore, if you cross two species they are always sterile.”

Nature does not follow absolute rules like that.

For some reason, they never talked to falconers.

Falconers routinely breed hybrid falcons to mix certain traits. Not only are these hybrids (generally crosses between large falcon species) fertile, but birds exist that have three or more species in their makeup.

Because birds don’t care about the “species barrier.” If two species don’t hybridize then they’re either far enough apart in behavior not to find each other attractive, far enough apart in distance not to get the chance, or outright refusing to do so (like carrion crows and hoodies). Most hybrids are crosses between gyrfalcons and other large falcon species. Saker x Lanner is also popular.

These crosses occasionally occur naturally where ranges overlap.

So, anyone who’s had any training in falconry (I never made it past apprentice for various reasons) will laugh in the face of anyone who says species cannot interbreed to produce fertile offspring.

Canids also don’t seem to care.

For that matter, felids can cross the genus barrier (domestic cat X servals exist) and corn snakes (Pantherophis guttatus) are genetically flexible enough to breed with any of the North American ratsnake species (Pantherophis sp.) a few of the Asian ratsnakes (Elaphe sp.), any of the kings and milks (Lampropeltis sp.), have been known to breed with bullsnakes and gopher snakes (Pituophis sp.) ….  although you can’t quite cross a cornsnake to a daffodil and get fertile offspring … it’s pretty close.