Meet The Coywolf on PBS This Wednesday, January 22, at 8.00 PM. Find out where all that howling at the moon on Cape Ann is coming from.
The coywolf, a mixture of western coyote and eastern wolf, is a remarkable new hybrid carnivore that is taking over territories once roamed by wolves and slipping unnoticed into our cities. Its appearance is very recent — within the last 90 years — in evolutionary terms, a blip in time. Beginning in Canada but by no means ending there, the story of how it came to be is an extraordinary tale of how quickly adaptation and evolution can occur, especially when humans interfere. Tag along as scientists study this new top predator, tracking it from the wilderness of Ontario’s Algonquin Park, through parking lots, alleys and backyards in Toronto all the way to the streets of New York City. -PBS
Good Morning Gloucester 
Excellent here Paul they are also bigger…Hybrid raising can present some challenges but like everythiing that’s done with care and love has a way off-setting…And sometimes us humans can and are our own worst enemy…I have seen bears killed as a result of feeding in some locations will leave it at that! 🙂
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Thanks for the reminder Paul – I definitely want to see this and knew it was coming up, but didn’t realize it was tomorrow.
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I have been reading up on Geneticist Bradley White who is featured in the show. I hope they spend more than 15 seconds on the genetics. I find that more fascinating than anything. We are watching evolution and Darwinian natural selection in real time. One of his quotes is that he is bummed he is retiring soon right when we can easily do the sequencing. No kidding. Illumina just announced three days ago an upgrade to the three instruments in my lab. A complete human genome last week cost $10,000 but now it costs $1,000. With a decent wolf and coyote SNP panel I could sequence 500 coywolfs for about 500 bucks. Just send me a blood sample, half a drop, if you run over one of these coywolfs and I can tell you what percent wolf they are. Using genomic testing the percent will be a true read, likely much higher than mitochondrial testing than has been done.
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This is a very good overview and right along with the line of work you do…Very important area that may offer somuch hope on the human side in the form of cures, (RD). Like the star trek series the final frontier (Exploring) 🙂 Go Duckie Go! May even find a way to keep the New Years plunge not so chilling ? 🙂
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After this year’s dive I am thinking of a neoprene jock strap might help.
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The pilot’s love the gloves that is 🙂
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