Meet the Coywolf: Nature's Next Top Dog?

Even while pure grey wolf populations continue to recover in North America, the top dog has been, and may continue to be, the coywolf. A hybrid of coyote, wolf, and even wild dog, this species appears to be one of the most successful predators in the United States, despite the fact it is one of the least protected animals.

Wild grey wolves were all but wiped out by overhunting in the United States in the early 1920s, allowing coyote populations to explode in once-suppressed regions and spill over into new territory. Now coyotes can be found in nearly every territory wolves once roamed.

Coyotes are not the only top predators in these regions. There's a larger and more dangerous top-dog too. The coywolf, or Eastern coyote, is a larger coyote with wolf-like features that can be found in land north of the Great Lakes.

Past field studies have found that despite their dominant coyote features, coywolves behave like the apex predators that once inhabited the region - hunting in packs and having a complex social structure. The Western coyote, on the other hand, is primarily a loner except during mating and birthing seasons.

A Heck of a Mutt

Just last month, the renowned science journalist Moises Velasquez-Manoff wrote in New York Times Magazine that it is largely thought that the coywolf is roughly one-quarter wolf and two-thirds coyote, with the rest being dog - a "canis soup" of mixed genes that Bradley White, a scientist at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, believes is the direct result of desperate and packless grey wolves breeding into coyote populations in the wake of their decline.

"The result has been a creature with enough strength to hunt the abundant woodland deer," Velasquez-Manoff wrote, "as much as 40 percent larger than the Western coyote, with powerful wolflike jaws."

Because the kills were left where they fell, rather than being dragged away like most scavengers would, Canion believed that the predator responsible could be linked to legends of the chupacabra, which is notorious for draining the blood of its victims.

Canion and her neighbors later found the bodies of three hairless and dog-like beasts and had samples sent away for testing.

In 2007, initial DNA analysis from Texas State University came back positive for a Mexican coyote with severe mange - an illness that causes hair loss. Further analysis investigating strange skeletal proportions and a blue tinge to the beast's skin revealed that the creature may have been a Mexican wolf and coyote hybrid - an uncommon cousin to the northern coywolf.

However, even if a coywolf is one chupacabra, it might not be all. Dozens of sighting of the mysterious creature have been made over the years, and many still speculate that it is its own elusive species.