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NobodySpecific t1_iuhmfea wrote

Reply to comment by Jmacaroni25 in Something killed and devoured a deer in my yard last night. Thought it was coyotes, but they don't decapitate... coywolves, actual wolves? What could have done this..... (Northern Vermont) by WheezeThaJuice

> Coywolfs aren't real by the way

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_coyote

Eastern Coyotes (which is what we have around here) have both coyote and wolf parentage. To me that makes them a coywolf. Do you have a different meaning of coywolf?

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Jmacaroni25 t1_iui3c8n wrote

Thats still just a coyote. They dont howl like wolves. Wolves are 3 times larger than any of these. And there are no wolves in Vermont and haven't been since at least the early 1900's. 90% of the state was unforested sheep farming pasture. They wolves that may have been here before 1900 were either killed or migrated north to Canada. So that would be 100s of generations of offspring that may have at one point had grey wolf DNA. However if they still have any wolves DNA it's no different than your pet dog having wolfe DNA. And no that doesn't make your Boston terrier and Boston terriwolf

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NobodySpecific t1_iui9flv wrote

No offense here, but I'm going to go with the experts on this one.

> In 2016, the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group proposes the eastern coyote to be a separate species Canis oriens (Latin for "eastern canid") and with a common name of "coywolf" due to its morphologic and genetic distinctiveness.

I don't know your background, but I do know that these people know a lot more than I do, so I'm going to just go ahead and follow their lead.

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