My wife is divorcing me over coyotes

[bugstruck]

PB,

Certainly no offense here.......but I wouldn't believe anything (of this nature) that hasn't come from a well recognized journal that has a high quality peer/literature review.....state/federal agency or a university. Everything else is suspect. People can write whatever they want in books and on the Web. That is not the case for scientific journals. Just my opinion anyway.

Jim,

No doubt that they should be rather better sources for most information. Until you've witnessed things science can't touch, you wouldn't be inclined to be skeptical of that as well. With the funding leverage and other pressures infecting science and universities these days, you have to take some of that with a grain of salt too. On average I agree it beats the eye witness or three. It also misses plenty. Look at the huge leaps in science that the guys 60 and 70 years ago were making. Dwarfs what we've done since in real world life-impact issues. We do communicate, compile, and see a lot better today. We do much, but the old guard made incredible advancements with much less information. I don't buy the "those discoveries were easy" arguement. Think how limited they were beside us today, yet they achieved it.

Did I sensibly state that just because science hasn't tracked it or observed it, it still could be so? Just like everything we still don't understand. Plenty.

Geez, this doesn't have much to do with coyotes and divorce does it?

 

[JimMorrissey]

The peer review is critical. That really keeps the financial issues at bay. Peers hammer each other and are extremely critical to keep them from getting a leg up.....Stats and testing techniques are reviewed with a magnify glass.

 

[bugstruck]

Jim,

Agreed on the peer review in the cutting-edge hard science category. Application science, I have some reservations on the reviews not being corrupted by $$. But we are talking Coyotes (hard science) and no $$ are flying, so I have to believe it's accurate until someone shows us otherwise. Sustainable mixed breeds of animals that weren't supposed to reproduce effectively have occured though, even when the science said no. That's the point I was really making.

 

[JimMorrissey]

Chris,

That is true, however I've not seen, nor heard of any supporting evidence of modern domesticated dog DNA (wild dog or otherwise) mixed with coyote in the wild. If dogs and coyotes interbred to create the much fabled "coydog" it would be found in the population and it isn't. People talk about coydogs and their agressive behavior all the time "because they're mixed with dogs and they've lost their fear of man" or similar statements......Coydogs to the average guy DO NOT exist Certainly on some research campus they've got some, or a private individual raised a few by hand via artificial insemination.

Good discussion though and I'm open to information showing otherwise....

 

[PBinWA]

Chris,

That is true, however I've not seen, nor heard of any supporting evidence of modern domesticated dog DNA (wild dog or otherwise) mixed with coyote in the wild. If dogs and coyotes interbred to create the much fabled "coydog" it would be found in the population and it isn't. People talk about coydogs and their agressive behavior all the time "because they're mixed with dogs and they've lost their fear of man" or similar statements......Coydogs to the average guy DO NOT exist Certainly on some research campus they've got some, or a private individual raised a few by hand via artificial insemination.

Good discussion though and I'm open to information showing otherwise....

Not peer reviewed but here's some stuff google found:

Eastern Coyotes Are Becoming Coywolves:
http://www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/local_news/story/fef373e9d


Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/276/5319/1687

Mitochondrial DNA control region sequences were analyzed from 162 wolves at 27 localities worldwide and from 140 domestic dogs representing 67 breeds. Sequences from both dogs and wolves showed considerable diversity and supported the hypothesis that wolves were the ancestors of dogs. Most dog sequences belonged to a divergent monophyletic clade sharing no sequences with wolves. The sequence divergence within this clade suggested that dogs originated more than 100,000 years before the present. Associations of dog haplotypes with other wolf lineages indicated episodes of admixture between wolves and dogs. Repeated genetic exchange between dog and wolf populations may have been an important source of variation for artificial selection.

Good ole Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coydog

Links to this article:

Molecular evolution of the dog family

http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/wayne2.htm

While none of these are peer reviewed studies (that I know of) I think they provide some good support for the theory of hybridization. In fact, it would appear that Coywolves are more common than Coydogs.

PB

 

[JimMorrissey]

No question they've bred with wolves.......

 

[Tom_H]

Assuming that feral dogs do not successfully interbreed with coyotes, there is still a seperate issue to consider: If feral dogs join a pack of coyotes (or foxes, dingos, whatever) what social affect is there on the pack? i.e. Is the social structure of the pack changed? Will the social familiarity that the once-domestic dogs have with humans cause them to venture into human territory and thus embolden the coyotes to overcome their trepidation and follow the ferals into human territory? If so, could this cause the entire sociology of the pack to change (this ventures into the discussion as to whether group behavior is genetically predetermined or taught/learned from generation to generation)? I have no clue to the answers and do not feel qualified to speculate, though I do think these are pertinent and valid questions. I have to follow Jim M's line of thought and would tend not to accept any "evidence" that did not follow scientific protocol.

 

[Jim B]

Very interesting tread. Just to throw my 2 cents in, I had a friend in southeastern Colorado who ran cattle, sheep and horses on thousands of acres. When I visited his farm house, I noticed that he had a around a dozen Greyhounds milling around his barnyard. I asked him about these animals and he told me that he adopted them from Greyhound rescue. Colorado is a Greyhound racing state. He said they are the best deterrent to his Coyote problem and that the Greyhounds run down and kill any Coyotes within several miles of his house. Greyhounds are very docile and excellent around children.

 

[redclay]

These will do the job....http://www.yellowblackmouth.com/home.htm

 

[TMAC]

This is a very good thread. Always nice to see that we can differ our opinions and have a good healthy conversation among us in the process. Good deal.