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Wild canine hybrids lurk in our midst. (Photo: WikiCommons/Public Domain)Have you heard any wolves howling in the northeast recently? Most likely not, since there aren’t any of them left. But if you heard one 150 years ago, this is probably the English translation of her cries: “I have literally no dating options left in my species … Any wolves out there? Anyone!” Nope.Wolves in eastern North America, whose populations steadily dwindled due to deforestation and hunting, had no choice but to settle for coyotes. Interspecies dating is a wonderful thing, but for a wolf, the larger and handsomer of the two canines, a...

It is rare for a new animal species to emerge in front of scientists’ eyes. But this seems to be happening in eastern North America. ___ Like some people who might rather not admit it, wolves faced with a scarcity of potential sexual partners are not beneath lowering their standards. It was desperation of this sort, biologists reckon, that led dwindling wolf populations in southern Ontario to begin, a century or two ago, breeding widely with dogs and coyotes. The clearance of forests for farming, together with the deliberate persecution which wolves often suffer at the hand of man, had...

The coywolf, a mixture of western coyote and eastern wolf, is a remarkable new hybrid carnivore that is taking over territories once roamed by wolves and slipping unnoticed into our cities. Its appearance is very recent — within the last 90 years — in evolutionary terms, a blip in time. Beginning in Canada but by no means ending there, the story of how it came to be is an extraordinary tale of how quickly adaptation and evolution can occur, especially when humans interfere. Tag along as scientists study this new top predator, tracking it from the wilderness of Ontario’s Algonquin...

Is it a coyote? Is it a wolf? Yes and yes. It's a "coywolf." The predators that are plaguing Durham Region and showing up in urban areas appear to be an emerging species resulting from wolves and coyotes interbreeding. The larger, highly adaptable animals "have the wolf characteristics of pack hunting and aggression and the coyote characteristics of lack of fear of human-developed areas," says Trent University geneticist Bradley White, who's been studying the hybrids for 12 years. We're seeing "evolution in action," he says. But that combination of genetic material from both species has spelled trouble for farmers, who...