The Coywolves Cometh

That’s not just the wind howling outside.

Illustration by Robert Meganck

A gray shadow caught in the headlights on a rural road. A yipping howl in a suburban park. A startling sight on a seaside beach. From mountain forests to urban neighborhoods, Virginia has become home to a clever and prolific predator. 

Meet the “coywolf.” 

Admittedly, that’s not a name that trips off the tongue. Nevertheless, from a biological perspective, neither is it altogether inaccurate. Genetic mashups, howling hybrids, the coyotes that have spread throughout Virginia over the past 30 to 40 years do indeed bear a healthy helping of wolf in their DNA.

That’s what biologist Dr. Christine Bozarth found in a study she conducted, analyzing DNA from coyotes in Northern Virginia—animals that are mostly coyote, with “dashes of gray wolf and domestic dog,” says Bozarth.

The story of those hybrids, and how they got here, begins with an environmental tragedy. Before the arrival of European settlers, wolves were found in Virginia and throughout North America. But through habitat loss and the hunting, trapping, and even poisoning of animals regarded as both a fur source and a dangerous nuisance, wolves were extirpated from Virginia—and, by the middle of the 20th century, from nearly all of the contiguous U.S. except an area where a small number survived in the northern Great Lakes region. 

But nature abhors a vacuum, notes Bozarth, and the coyotes that once were confined largely to a territory in the central/western parts of the country happen to prefer the partially cleared land that settlement and the growth of farms, towns and, eventually, suburbs created. And while they have been subject to the same kinds of eradication strategies that brought wolves to the edge of extinction in this country, coyotes have managed to thwart those efforts, instead steadily expanding their range over the past 100 to 150 years until they now can be found throughout North America, from Alaska to Mexico and West Coast to east. “They are absolutely everywhere,” says Bozarth. 

Coyotes, she notes, are highly adaptable. As omnivores, “they are very good at taking advantage of any kind of resources there are,” she says. They’ll eat rabbits, rodents, fruits, flowers and seeds, even smaller deer—and, pet owners beware, have been known to attack cats and small dogs. They have made themselves at home in suburban neighborhoods, city parks, and the occasional surprised homeowner’s garage. Coyotes have been seen loping through the heart of Richmond, ambling near the Virginia Beach oceanfront, and roaming the sprawl of Northern Virginia. Attempts at relocating, eliminating, or keeping them out tend to be unsuccessful at best, and sometimes even counterproductive. Bozarth notes, for example, that research has found that strategies as drastic as killing all of the pups in a den will only result in females producing more frequent and larger litters. “You just can’t get rid of coyotes,” she says.

But back to that “coywolf” business. 

What Bozarth found in the DNA in her study suggests that as coyotes began expanding their range, at some point a few came in contact with the small remaining population of Great Lakes wolves. “Coyotes were abundant and wolves were rare,” says Bozarth, and in such situations, where two closely related species encounter each other, she explains, “if one species is very rare and they are having a hard time finding a mate, they may mate with a very close species.” 

Bozarth wasn’t surprised that the results of her study confirmed that hypothesis. But, she says, “There was a lot of wolf—I was kind of surprised by that.” What she also hadn’t anticipated was DNA evidence suggesting that coyotes had also come into Virginia from the south, hybridizing with red wolves that now are found only in eastern North Carolina. 

Thanks to that wolf DNA, says Bozarth, Virginia’s coyotes can be as big as 50 to 80 pounds, making them much larger than their western counterparts, which usually are around 30 to 40 pounds at maturity. Their behavior, however, remains coyote-like. Coyotes mate for life, and “they don’t really exhibit the same pack behavior that wolves do,” says Bozarth. “They usually hunt either by themselves or in pairs.” They also tend to be shy and reclusive; Bozarth spent three years collecting coyote poop (it’s a glamorous life in field biology) at Quantico Marine base for her study and only saw an actual coyote once. 

So are “coywolves” really a thing? “That’s a very active part of scientific debate right now,” says Bozarth. There are scientists who think the “Eastern coyote” should be designated its own species, she says, and yet genetic analysis argues they’re more of a hybrid, with coyote, wolf, and even some dog mixed in their DNA. “They don’t really follow the rules of the biological species concept.” 

Not that the coyotes care. Call ’em whatever you want to—they’re still here to stay. 


This article originally appeared in our December 2018 issue.

caroline kettlewell
Insatiably curious, Caroline Kettlewell has written on many topics, from endurance athletes and electric cars to the delightful diversity of Virginia’s native flora and fauna. She is the author of two works of nonfiction. CarolineKettlewell.com
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