With every new week, people ask me if we have wolves in our area. Before I share my answer, let me explain what “coyote” means: “Coyote” is simply a Native American (Nahuatl, to be precise) name for this smaller North American wolf that shares the genus “canis” with wolves (including domestic dogs). In fact, the accepted English common names for the coyote include “brush wolf” and “American jackal”: Essentially coyotes are wolves, and thus can (and likely do) hybridize with the gray wolf complex. Things get further complicated by the endangered (southeastern) red wolf, which our NY coyotes can strongly resemble. Our large, often red eastern coyotes are believed by many, myself included, to carry relic genes of the red wolf, genes that are more commonly each year expressed in our local populations. In Warwick, some localized populations express many red and blonde morphs, while Sugar Loaf and Middletown have hosted solid black coyotes.
Maybe we need to get past this peculiar use of a Nahuatl name for this smaller wolf, or maybe simply use native names for all of them.
Think of it this way: If for some reason we simply called the coyote by its English name of “brush wolf,” but called the larger gray/timber wolf by its Diné (AKA “Navajo”) name of “ maʼiitsoh,” would we suddenly say that the large Maʼiitsoh is not a wolf, while the red wolf, the brush wolf and others are, simply because we dropped the noun “wolf” from its common name?
It’s a completely arbitrary linguistic stumble that makes us think, artificially, of coyotes as non-wolves.
Now, to add an even more maddening fact: taxonomy can be, and often is, an arbitrarily artificial process. There are few truly hard-set rules in taxonomical nomination, hence the continued “splitting” and “clumping” of manifold species, and the endless arguments of bio-nerds as to which species is really a species, and which really is not. Phylogenetics, surprisingly to many, is far from being an exact science.
Our eastern coyotes are a basically harmless small wolf species that prefers to eat small rodents over anything else, but they can develop a taste for domestic cats and small dogs, too. Unlike their western counterparts, they subsist in a landscape of high biodiversity and have little need to pester any animal more than half their size.
As far as their habits, their native name, and taxonomical debates, I prefer to simply enjoy, protect, and, whenever possible, to educate others about... the beautiful other-than human earthlings with whom we’re sharing this little flash of a life.
But that’s just me.
Jay Westerveld,
NYNH
Jay Westerveld has been researching natural and cultural history for over 40 years throughout America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. He is a former visiting lecturer with Columbia University, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the NY Entomological Society, the American Museum of Natural History, Northeast Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, the Northeast Natural History Association, the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, and others. In 2008, the NYS Assembly recognized him for his research with the endangered bog turtle in NY.