It leaves the impression that they are a near 50-50 mix of wolf and coyote, and that just isn't the case, he said. "I know too many people who are knowledgeable people who have seen them," he said.Ĭoyote expert Stan Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University, rejects the term "coywolf." He doesn't even like referring to them as hybrids. They believe they're seeing wolves, he said. Though researchers have determined the range of coywolves - from the Great Lakes east and as far south as Virginia - their numbers and whether their behavior is distinctive from pure coyotes is still largely unknown.Ĭheboygan County farmer William Benthem hasn't seen them, but hears the stories from fellow farmers. They look like coyotes, though observers often note wolflike characteristics in their faces and fur.
and eastern Canada, and have been confirmed in northeast Lower Michigan through blood-testing and DNA analysis.Ĭoywolves tend to be a little larger and heavier than their western coyote counterparts, but still well below the size of even the smallest North American wolves. It may sound like an urban legend, but coywolves exist throughout the northeastern U.S. They're mostly coyote, but contain a small percentage of wolf from an unlikely mating of the two species about a century ago. Myers' close encounter was with a unique, still relatively unknown and misunderstood hybrid of coyotes known as eastern coyotes or coywolves. "It was probably at least an hour before the hairs on the back of my neck sat down." Those were pack-mates coming into this rendezvous point. But this was in forest and swampland these were no dogs. "About five minutes later, I hear a bark from my right, then a bark from my left, five or six of them.
#Jackal vs coyote full
"As the full moon goes up above the jackpines, one of these things starts howling - it wasn't the yipping of a coyote or the full voice of a wolf but a hoarse, sustained call," he said.
So, one night last August, Myers parked his pickup about a quarter-mile from the spot and listened.
Based at U-M's Biological Station in Cheboygan County, researchers had found dens, and what they thought was a rendezvous point. Wolves are known to have a rendezvous point where, in the evening, individual wolves that may be sleeping all over get together as a pack to go off hunting, said Myers, a now-retired professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Phil Myers had heard the stories from Cheboygan County farmers: Tales of odd, oversized animals that looked bigger than a coyote, but smaller than a wolf, and hunted in packs - and how strange they sounded.
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