The coyote (US // or //, UK //, or //;[a]Canis latrans) is a canid native to North America. It is a smaller, more basal animal than its close relative, the gray wolf,[2] being roughly the North American equivalent to the old world golden jackal, though it is larger and more predatory in nature.[3] It is listed as "least concern" by the IUCN, on account of its wide distribution and abundance throughout North America, Mexico and into Central America. It is a highly versatile species, whose range has expanded amidst human environmental modification.[1] This expansion is ongoing, and it may one day reach South America, as shown by the animal's presence beyond the Panama Canal in 2013.[4] As of 2005[update], 19 subspecies are recognized.[5]
The ancestors of the coyote diverged from those of the gray wolf, 12 million years ago,[6] with the modern species arising in North America during the Middle Pleistocene.[2] It is highly flexible in social organization, living either in nuclear families or in loosely-knit packs of unrelated individuals. It has a varied diet consisting primarily of animal matter, including ungulates, lagomorphs, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates, though it may also eat fruit and vegetable matter on occasion.[7] It is a very vocal animal, whose most iconic sound consists of a howl emitted by solitary individuals.[8]Humans aside, cougars[9] and gray wolves[10] are the coyote's only serious enemies. Nevertheless, coyotes have on occasion mated with the latter species, producing hybrids colloquially called "coywolves".
The coyote is a prominent character in Native American folklore, usually depicted as a trickster who alternately assumes the form of an actual coyote or a man. As with other trickster figures, the coyote acts as a picaresque hero which rebels against social convention through deception and humor.[11] The animal was especially respected in Mesoamerican cosmology as a symbol of military might,[12] with some scholars having traced the origin of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl to a pre-Aztec coyote deity.[13] After the European colonization of the Americas, it was reviled in Anglo-American culture as a cowardly and untrustworthy animal. Unlike the gray wolf, which has undergone a radical improvement of its public image, cultural attitudes towards the coyote remain largely negative.[14][15]
Coyote males average 820kg (1844lb) in weight, while females average 718kg (1540lb), though size varies geographically. Northern subspecies, which average 18kg (40lb), tend to grow larger than the southern subspecies of Mexico, which average 11.5kg (25lb). Body length ranges on average from 1 to 1.35 metres (3ft 3.37in to 4ft 5.15in), and tail length 40 centimetres (16in), with females being shorter in both body length and height.[16] The largest coyote on record was a male killed near Afton, Wyoming on November 19, 1937 which measured 1.6 metres (5ft 3in) from nose to tail, and weighed 33.9 kilograms (75lb).[17] Scent glands are located at the upper side of the base of the tail and are a bluish black color.[18]
The color and texture of the coyote's fur varies somewhat geographically.[16] The hair's predominant color is light gray and red or fulvous, interspersed around the body with black and white. Coyotes living on high elevations tend to have more black and gray shades than their desert-dwelling counterparts, which are more fulvous or whitish-gray.[19] The coyote's fur consists of short, soft underfur and long, coarse guard hairs. The fur of northern subspecies is longer and denser than in southern forms, with the fur of some Mexican and Central American forms being almost hispid.[20]Albinism is extremely rare in coyotes; out of a total of 750,000 coyotes harvested by Federal and cooperative hunters between March 22, 1938 to June 30, 1945, only two were albinos.[19]
The coyote is typically smaller than the gray wolf, but has longer ears and a larger braincase,[16] as well as a thinner frame, face and muzzle. The coyote also carries its tail downwards when running or walking, rather than horizontally as the wolf does.[21] Coyote tracks can be distinguished from those of dogs by their more elongated, less rounded shape.[22] Scent glands are smaller than the gray wolf's, but the same color.[18] Its fur color variation is much less varied than that of a wolf.
By the time of the European colonization of the Americas, coyotes were largely confined to open plains and arid regions of the western half of the continent.[23] It is often difficult in early post-Columbian historical records to distinguish between coyotes and wolves. One record from 1750 in Kaskaskia, Illinois written by a local priest noted that the "wolves" encountered there were smaller and less daring than European wolves. Another account from the early 1800s in Edwards County mentioned wolves howling at night, though these were likely coyotes.[24] The species was encountered several times during the Lewis and Clark Expedition (18041806), though it was already well-known to European traders on the upper Missouri. Lewis, writing on May 5, 1805, in northeastern Montana, described the coyote as follows:[25]
the small woolf or burrowing dog of the prairies are the inhabitants almost invariably of the open plains; they usually ascociate in bands of ten or twelve sometimes more and burrow near some pass or place much frequented by game; not being able alone to take deer or goat they are rarely ever found alone but hunt in bands; they frequently watch and seize their prey near their burrows; in these burrows they raise their young and to them they also resort when pursued; when a person approaches them they frequently bark, their note being precisely that of the small dog. they are of an intermediate size between that of the fox and dog, very active fleet and delicately formed; the ears large erect and pointed the head long and pointed more like that of the fox; tale long; . . . the hair and fur also resembles the fox tho' is much coarser and inferior. they are of a pale redish brown colour. the eye of a deep sea green colour small and piercing. their tallons [claws] are reather longer than those of the ordinary wolf or that common to the atlantic states, none of which are to be found in this quarter, nor I believe above the river Plat.
The coyote was first scientifically described by Thomas Say in September 1819 on the site of Lewis and Clark's Council Bluffs, fifteen miles up the Missouri River from the mouth of the Platte during a government-sponsored expedition with Major Stephen Long. He had the first edition of the Lewis and Clark journals in hand, which contained Biddle's edited version of Lewis's observations dated May 5, 1805.[26][27]
The earliest written reference to the species comes from Francisco Hernndez's Plantas y Animales de la Nueva Espaa (1651), where it is described as a "Spanish fox" or "jackal". The first published usage of the word "coyote" (the root word of which is the Nahuatl coyotl) comes from Francisco Javier Clavijero's Historia de Mxico in 1780.[28] The first time it was used in English occurred in William Bullock's Six months' residence and travels in Mexico (1824), where it is variously transcribed as cayjotte and cocyotie. The word's spelling was standardized as "coyote" by the 1880s.[25][29] Alternative English names for the coyote include "prairie wolf", "brush wolf", "cased wolf",[30][b] "little wolf"[7] and "American jackal".[31]
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