One outcome of this interbreeding is that these animals have lost their fear of people, but they retain their predatory instincts, making them quite dangerous.
There are coyotes in the northern part of Nova Scotia that have attacked lone hikers. A woman was killed, in fact a few years ago, and there have been numerous scary encounters in which the animal creeps closer and closer to a wary human, much like a predator approaching its prey.
The coyotes in this part of Canada are said to have interbred with dogs; it's not clear that these are the wolf-coyote-dog hybrids described in the article, but anyway these animals harassing hikers have been hanging out in the forested national park, as wolves would do.
Park rangers have tried to control the population, with varying results. Simply shooting a few of the coyotes actually can backfire; it seems to stimulate larger litters to replenish the population.
We might have to return to the pioneer approach of shooting them on sight, and hope this instills a healthy fear of humans as they once had. It's good having them around, because they control the rodent population which is a vector for disease bearing ticks and other problems. We just don't want them stalking our children in the local park.
Coyotes have only killed two people in North America in all of recorded history (and if you check recorded history for wolf attacks it goes back at least to the 1800s).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attacks_on_humans
A 3 year old child in 1981 and a 19 year old woman in 2009. Both victims were alone at the time of their attacks. Coyotes killing humans is an exceedingly rare occurrence.
Not that it provides much statistical evidence, but the wikipedia[0] article (regarding the 19 year old girl) talking about the coyotes specifically mentions how coyotes didn't use to be in that area of Canada, but were likely there as a result of rapid adaptive evolution[1].
Obviously that doesn't statistically show that they're getting more aggressive, but it's not something you can easily ignore either, given the lack of other coyote attacks.
You cannot make sense of an emerging phenomenon by looking at century old records of superficially similar phenomena.
The 3 year old case sounds like an outlier, regular coyotes getting at an unprotected child.
The case of the 19 year old may be the canary on the coal mine. A fully grown adult should have scared off the coyotes, but that's not how it happened. We should be asking what was different in this case and why the expectations were not met.
> I don't see how you can call 1 case an emerging phenomenon. More over that there haven't been any other cases since.
It is really easy, you start with one model of reality, then a piece of evidence comes that does not seem to fit the model.
The first step is to formulate hypothesis that explain that gap between the theory and the practice. Normally, the next step would involve gathering evidence that disproofs each hypothesis, and whichever you cannot disproof, it is the real explanation (which either will confirm your model or provide raw material to refine). Since I have no strong incentive to investigate this particular cases, I will just let be.
However, what I pointed out in my first comment is this: If you brush under the carpet every piece of evidence that do not seem to fit your model, you will end up with a broken model and a very bumpy carpet.
> you start with one model of reality, then a piece of evidence comes that does not seem to fit the model
This is not emergence of a new phenomenon, this is an outlier[0]. There are always outliers. Claiming that a new phenomenon is emerging necessarily implies multiple data points to distinguish it from isolated statistical anomalies, which will otherwise be regarded as simple outliers caused by factors isolated to that incident.
There's an important difference between "brushing under the carpet evidence that does not seem to fit your model" and simply regarding such evidence, tentatively and in the short term, as an expected statistical anomaly until there is sufficient data to recognize a trend. There is no trend here, and until there is, it is completely reasonable to treat isolated incidents as outliers.
Well in Australia, death by horse (including falls) accounts for about 20 people a year and death by bee accounts for around 10 .. I don't think there's much to worry about from this hybrid.
Seems overly anxious, don't you think? Isolated incidents occur between humans and all natural predators on occasion. Obviously humankind isn't currently threatened in a serious way ... until these interbreed with zombies, of course.
Btw, have you ever considered the real reason why humans so eagerly bury/burn their dead?
It's quite likely because we don't want natural predators to get used to the taste of human flesh.
I live in a country where bears have been hunted for millenia. As a result I've slept about 1,5km away from known bear nest in the woods. It was scouting trip and none of us was really worried. Because we knew that by now, bears really don't like to get in touch with humans.
The point is not to "eradicate" anything. The point is to instill fear. Which these days has allowed so harmonious human-bear relations here, that their numbers are rising.
Hopefully stuff like pepper spray and rubber bullets are used before that shoot on sight is necessary.
> It's quite likely because we don't want natural predators to get used to the taste of human flesh.
What do you suggest to dispose of human cadavers other than burying them because other methods like incineration and the likes are not as economic as the former method?
I had no idea that such practice existed, thanks for sharing!
Not to take away any credit from your argument but not all places on Earth have mountains nearby. Also, I assume that since these nations and people live in mountainous terrains, they had to come up with a method to dispose of those cadavers in the face of land scarcity where they live.
Tibetans also do a water burial. The first time I was there, I was asking about eating fish and birds in addition to mammals, and was told, "Tibetans do not eat fish and birds because fish and birds eat people," which I first thought was a joke.
Yeah, I'll do that when my friends' ghosts show up to tell me that I should do it. And even then, they might get run through another link in the food chain first--maybe even two--because I don't want spongiform encephalopathy (kuru).
> One outcome of this interbreeding is that these animals have lost their fear of people, but they retain their predatory instincts, making them quite dangerous.
They're going to find out fairly quickly that this combination is maladaptive. This also explains why dog and wolfs split... you can be aggressive and fear people, or you can be friendly and not fear people, but not both.
Or you can be a stray dog living on the street being just aggressive enough that people don't bother you, but you aren't being killed because you're protected by a treaty for humane treatment of animals and your numbers aren't dwindling fast enough because people aren't spaying their pets and the government doesn't have enough resources to spay every stray. You also learn how to appear cute and harmless when hungry and how to jump on a table, grab a loaf of bread and run at over 30mph uphill.
You could be right, but on the other hand you see to rely only on assumptions as to what comes from the genetics of each species and which bits are going to be retained.
It's not like Dingos in Australia are extremely dangerous for instance. Sure they still are to an extent, like most animals living in the wild, but it's not better or worse in terms of behavior than any other wild animal.
Sharks kill humans annually. So do big cats. And snakes. What are we going to do? Shoot all these on sight? Predate to extinction (and not even for their nutritional value) those species that harm us in even the slightest way? I oppose that. No thanks. That's not the type of world I want to live in. I want to co-exist with these amazing creatures, not drive them to extinction, or only have them alive in captivity.
Your response was to the statement by igravious, which highlighted "Sharks", "big cats", and "snakes".
Two of those are not invasive species at all. Of the third, only a few species of snakes are invasive. You'll also notice that sharks have not gotten closer to human habitation in any significant way.
So your response is almost irrelevant to what igravious was talking about.
I assumed it was relevant, and the only way I could figure out how to assume you mean that human (and more specifically child) safety gets priority over everything else.
If someone wants to live in or move to a place with big cats, then your view is that they should kill (or "thin") the species, yes? Eventually this means the extinction of all potentially dangerous creatures, does it not?
Unless we're thinkíng of some apocalyptic scenario, your child is million times more likely to die in a car crash than being killed by a wolf and a hundred times more likely to be killed by your neughbor's pitbull.
I have a child, but think about it this way. Every creature killed was the child of some creature. You're saying it's our children versus their children, all or nothing? But they're non-human animals so tough luck to them. We can do better I believe.
What I'm asking is are we asserting that humanity has claimed the _entire_ globe as its habitat? Where do all the other species go that because of their nature run into trouble with us? Why not share a habitat with the creatures we can and make large wildlife reserves for the creatures we can't. Is this too idealistic? And if our paths do cross they need to be protected from us, not the other way around, because they don't know any better and we do.
I'm certainly not advocating killing everything that moves and I certainly agree that there are too many humans on earth. I have no solution for that except stop making babies.
However when there are dangerous animals around humans I will certainly not blame someone for protecting his / her family, especially in the case of an invasive specie like the coywolf that is not in danger of extinction.
By the way, I never said that I think there are too many humans on Earth. This is a populist viewpoint, and it is not one I share. Even with current technology I believe the Earth could sustain > 10,000,000,000 humans with the caveat that humanity recognises which activities are unsustainable and alters its collective behaviour possibly through regulation if people won't voluntarily change their lifestyles.
Examples: increased urbanisation, cutting meat consumption to increase the amount of land for crops, increased shared use of transport, assuming hydrocarbons and peat-bogs are semi-scarce non-renewable resources then transition away from them as sources of energy to renewables, travel less by using telecommunication, and so on.
Many pathogens and parasites are amazing creatures. Do you take the same stance with those, or are you only in favor of charismatic megafauna roaming wild?
From my point of view, lions, crocodiles, wolves, etc... they're basically microencephalized sociopaths. It would be better if they never harmed any creature capable of suffering. That means either eliminating them or drastically modifying them. Granted, this is currently neither feasible nor a high priority. The world has plenty of other problems that need addressed first.
Still, I'd rather these predators not exist. The harm they inflict on other creatures far outweighs the warm fuzzies we get from seeing them on nature shows.
Interesting. Not wanting to put words in your mouth, but that sounds like trying to impose a vegan lifestyle (for the record: I'm vegetarian and mostly vegan now) to the animal kingdom.
I can understand part of the sentiment, but I'm a bit cautious of 1) the possibility of that happening 2) the impacts 3) the ethics.
That's an accurate representation of my views. Though as I said, it's pretty low on the list of things that need fixing.
One day –hopefully– humanity will have its shit together. Then the majority of suffering will be inflicted by (non-human) animals upon other animals. What do we do about that? I don't have an answer, but I'm pretty sure "let it continue" isn't it.
To bring the discussion back to the present: I think most people don't consider the morality of letting predators exist. If it was a disease or parasite that killed 10 people a year, we'd all agree on eradication. If it was a human being who killed 10 people a year, we'd all want to lock that person away until they died of old age. Nobody would make arguments like, "Your child is 1,000x more likely to be killed by a car than by a serial killer." But give the creature some fur and claws and have it roar or howl majestically... suddenly all manner of rationalizations are brought out in support.
The level of damage you will inflict on functioning eco-systems by "engineering" predators out of the equation will be truly catastrophic. What you might not realise is that by removing predators you will also have to change each and every other animal or organism that is currently alive in the world. You are talking about re-engineering almost all living creatures on our planet.
Let me explain by way of an example that is close to home for me. In my country of birth we have many areas which normally used to have free roaming wildlife including predators like lions and leopards. These areas where subsequently taken over as farm land and the big cats removed. This allowed the pray, usually antelope and other herbivores, to breed out of control causing immeasurable damage to the vegetation and if left unchecked would cause these animals to die of starvation in the end. It might sound far fetched but these ever increasing herds do cause damage to the vegetation if their numbers become too big. Given this situation farmers and conservationists either have to organise regular culls of these animals or capture and relocate them. Unfortunately there is only so many place you can relocate them to before the natural environment cannot accommodate them anymore and starvation due to destroyed vegetation sets in.
Predators in these natural eco-systems serve a very necessary function.
I am not talking about Human predators here so please dont confuse the above example with justifying why some human beings prey on others. Human predators need to be removed from our society. We are not animals and have the ability to reason which sets a different standard for us.
What I am trying to illustrate is the logical conclusion of your very well intended desire to reduce suffering. I applaud your desire to reduce animal suffering, of which we humans have a lot of blame for, but to extrapolate that to natural eco-systems could have disastrous effects.
I might be on board with eradicating parasitism from the Earth ecosystem. But there's no way I would agree to eliminate non-human predation, ever.
Yes. Let it continue. It is not your place to eliminate anyone else's suffering, in humans or otherwise.
I once read "Three Worlds Collide" by E. Yudkowsky. There are alternate endings to the story, that I won't spoil. But it is a tale intended to make you think about your own ethics. It is a long hypothetical that sets up the question, "What could it mean to have an ethical imperative to eliminate suffering?"
I didn't like the endings. I think it is unethical to project your own morality onto other species.
And that's the story that made me realize that those who practice veganism because they do not wish to inflict suffering upon other species for their own benefit are perfectly reasonable people, capable of coexisting with others, whereas those who would attempt to enforce that lifestyle upon others are a threat to me. When you cross over that line between "I don't" and "you shouldn't", I become wary. When you move a bit further to "no one should", you become my enemy.
That doesn't make any sense. You treat a human being as one entity and a whole animal species as one entity. Almost nobody would see any problem with killing a particular wolf that repeatedly attacks people.
Diseases that are part of erradication programs used to kill or cause lifelong disability to millions. Diseases that kill thousands could be recommended to vaccinate aginst for those at risk. There would hardly be any research into a disease that kills 10 people a year.
Funny that you mention rationalizing; something these non-human predator can not do. They are simply doing what their instincts drive them to do: hunt and survive.
That is nowhere near the same thing as a human killer that does it for non-survival reasons; anger, entertainment, sexual excitement, etc. Even if we say that human killers are driven by instinct, as animals are, they also have the ability to reason about the motivations, impact, and eventual consequences of those actions.
"It would be better if predators where eliminated"
Wrong idea; and the campaigns against predators in journals, just because this sells newspapers, are becoming a big problem in itself.
Anybody people honestly worried by animal and human suffering should definitely welcome predators. Yes, is true that coywolves had unfortunately killed 1 women doing footing some years ago in a national park. One.
But maybe we should be worried also about people killed in car crashes or bleeding in pain before to be rescued. Maybe should be worried also for the more than 100.000 men and women suffering each year in hospitals, with brain inflamation, recurrent fever, chills, diarrhea. Or for pregnant women having miscarriages and stillbirths.
... Yes, people probably should be afraid, very afraid by the beautiful herbivores instead, responsibles of all of this.
When I think in a real microencephalized sociopath that runs blindly trying to grasp any human at sight (children, women and men), something evil and terrifying, that lurks hidden out of your house waiting patiently for your children, I think in deer ticks.
So if you think that to eliminate the predators are a good idea, think again. You will have much more deer ticks around instead (and much more human and animal suffering as consequence).
The problem is that every creature harms something else. Every species would eat itself to starvation given the chance. Look up the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and the diversity and balance it has allowed.
In eastern Los Angeles, coyotes are everywhere, to the point where in some areas you run into them constantly day or night. They're stealthy - silent and very calculating. You can tell many of them are part domestic dog and they don't seem phased by proximity to people and appear to understand the workings of the city to some extent. I have seen the mentioned looking both ways when crossing roads, and also use of sidewalks.
Coyotes are very good at not calling attention to themselves when needed. In fact I lived next to a den of them in LA for years and never heard a peep, despite seeing them staking me out from my neighbor's roof in broad daylight, testing the perimeters of my house more than a few times.
The thing is they're smarter than we give them credit, adapting to the man made environment and expand territory very quickly. We talk about controlling their population but they can parry - adeptly skilled at out-maneuvering people. Hold eye contact and you realize even though they look like a little dog, they're not your friend - they're studying you.
The speed at which they're expanding territory and where they're headed on the East coast now, is interesting. Growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania we never saw coyotes really, but in the last few years I'm hearing lots of stories about them from family. And now even here in NYC they're making an appearance as well.
The coyote / dog mix in LA seemed to not only have adapted to urban areas but use it to their advantage. Now add wolf to the mix and drop them in the environs of bountiful woodland and endless suburban sprawl of the eastern seaboard, what happens?
If an apex predator were to adapt into becoming an anthropocene survivor species, a prerequisite would be having intelligence enough to outwit humans. A species partly forged in human company, with increased intelligence, that uses our own environment as an advantage, and can hunt and eat us. Oh and reach full maturity in about a year. They may seem cute now, but give them a few generations and they might not be so cute any more.
That's true but they won't know that straight away, they aren't a threat to is in the long term (if they become a threat we'll just eradicate them) but in the short term it could be interesting.
The thing is, coyotes aren't aggressive. Or particularly destructive either. They have the benign appearance and demeanor of shy dogs. It would take a lot of effort to witness a coyote being violent. As prey, you'd likely never see a coyote being aggressive towards you until you're being jumped by the pack. So in most situations there's no evidence they are anything but cute and harmless. That's their adaptation.
Surely the first thing an anthropocene apex predator species need to do is not attack humans? Doing so would inevitably lead to complete extermination?
In a parallel development, a hybrid pigeon, hawk, and roadrunner—the "pigeawkrunner"—has emerged in the same environments as the coywolf. Reports that the coywolf's attempts to catch the pigeawkrunner frequently backfire, resulting in deadly if amusing rock-falls, are as yet unsubstantiated.
I saw that story, I think it was on the same site that had the piece on the Midwest entrepreneur who recently closed a successful round A for his oversized magnet company.
They have really diversified in recent years, making lateral moves from blacksmithing tools to large-diameter springs, and then into rocketry. They truly are a company that makes everything.
used to go out with two of my brothers in the fields near our house in northern Vermont. The grass was chest height on a full grown man with some shorter spots where clover or ragweed or shorter grasses had taken root.
We would hear the coyotes howling over the ridge and go to the middle of the field and call them. When they crested the ridge to investigate we would crouch down really low on all fours with our eyes down. They would creep up on us with two or three going off to our flanks. When they got close enough we would stand up, wave our arms and hoot and holler, scaring them off. It was probably foolish for many reasons but we were in our late teens or early twenties and thought that a three on three mano-e-pata match was no contest in our favor.
We didn't do this often but it happend more than once.
So this is why we have been noticing exponentially more "coyotes" roaming around the suburbs of the GTA recently?
My girlfriend was walking our dog last week and saw 3 of them within an hour. The next morning she saw 2.
The other day I was walking the dog and some kid stopped me to warn me about a "wolf" that was growling at him around the corner.
This is all within steps of our small "downtown" and I just kept thinking how strange it was to see so many of them in such a short period of time. I have lived here all my life and I don't think that I have ever seen a single "coyote" in the flesh.
Looks like it's time to start carrying some pepper spray on my usual dog walks? The thought of watching some wild animal devour my dog (or me) is terrifying.
I live in the heart of Chicago, not the suburbs at all & there are coyotes all around my place. The feral cat & rabbit population has plummeted & I wouldn't leave a small dog out at night. That said they stay pretty far away from people.
Never heard of these being called "coywolf", but it's been known for a while that eastern coyotes are partly mixed with wolves. Good for them, too. Western coyotes are kind of wimpy. Now if we could breed the coyote with various bears, North America might start to rival Africa for impressive and fearsome predators.
Not around here. In Portland, Oregon, in the west hills <2 miles from downtown and the Willamette River, we are witnessing a marked increase in coyote sightings, and scary interactions with humans.
In the last few weeks we've seen coyotes 2 to 3 times a week during daylight, curiously almost always around 3 PM. Until recently it was rare to see coyotes at all. They are fond of rifling through the contents of garbage cans. We now use extra layers of "security" to prevent coyotes getting into the trash.
They are bold, fearless and evidently numerous. A couple of days ago a coyote was wandering up our driveway when my wife was nearby pulling weeds. Of course, she got out of the way. Based on its direction I was concerned it might go into the garage, dislodging it from there could be a big problem.
Fortunately that day the coyote headed elsewhere. However people have become alarmed to the extent a neighborhood meeting is scheduled next week to consider options. There's serious concern about safety of small kids in the area, and really I can understand that source of worry.
The wolf, dingo, dog, coyote, and golden jackal diverged relatively recently, around three to four million years ago, and all have 78 chromosomes arranged in 39 pairs.[6] This allows them to hybridize freely (barring size or behavioral constraints) and produce fertile offspring.
> Coyotes are closely related to eastern and red wolves, having diverged 150,000–300,000 years ago and evolved side by side in North America, thus facilitating hybridization.
I live (and grew up in) in Central New York (as in: middle of Upstate New York). We've had "coydogs" as long as I remember. I sort of assumed it was a myth, in fact I remember being told it was a myth and that they were just plain coyotes.
Then again, the kids also claimed that they were faster, smarter, and would hunt humans...so there was definitely some mythology going on.
I find these stories intriguing. Several have come together over the last decade or so, this one, the bear hunt in Florida because of too many bears, the Burmese Pythons in the Everglades eating everything, mountain lions living in many parts of the Bay Area near people, the rat explosion in NYC.
All wildlife finding a niche in the urban and suburban world we've created and retaking territory originally ceded during an aggressive hunting and trapping phase of our existence.
Once we become the hunted what then? We have not yet seen these animals predating on the homeless but I expect it's only a matter of time.
The Burmese Pythons in the Everglades don't fit your pattern. The Everglades is neither urban nor suburban, the pythons live in areas that were never really settled by people, and of course the pythons are not native so are not 'retaking'.
And it's hard to say anything about NYC's rat problem as there are no good estimates of the rat population. The generally held belief has been one rat per person, but a statistician recently argued that there are only two million. Quoting further from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/nyregion/8-million-rats-in... :
> The health department says its efforts have paid off. “We have seen an overall decrease in the number of active rat signs throughout New York City,” Levi Fishman, the deputy press secretary for the department, said in an email.
> How much of a decrease? Mr. Fishman said that “there are no scientific methods for being able to accurately count the number of rats in New York or any large city.” Similarly, Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is well steeped in the battle against rodents, said it had never quantified the rat population living in the subway system.
Instead, I suggest a possible bias to your information sources: everyone has cameras, and takes pictures of everything, so the number of rat-related videos has gone up.
You bring up 'the homeless'. As a reminder, many of those people living and killing animals in the 'aggressive hunting and trapping phase of our existence' did not do so from homes, so I don't think that's the relevant characteristic.
Your point about the rats is well taken. It does make for good click bait and over exposure serves multiple interests beyond simply informing the public.
I worry about the homeless as a vulnerable population who is disproportionately threatened by wildlife in an urban setting. Whether it is from plague carrying fleas on rats running around an encampment or a group of coywolves or a mountain lion deciding that this particular human sleeping under a bush in a park might be prey.
Sure. My comment is different. "Homeless" humans managed pretty well against lions, tigers, and bears. I think it's the defenseless you're concerned about. A house is one sort of defense. So is a car. So is a homeless encampment. So are guns and dogs. Few homeless are defenseless in the way you mean. While some people with homes are still defenseless against the threats you are worried about.
If you are concerned about plague, I think you should look more at domestic cats than homeless humans. Cats kill and eat infected rodents and pass the disease to humans. There have been 16 in the US because of that transmission mechanism. For that matter, there have bee 64 cases as a result of someone butchering or skinning an animal.
And while traditionally linked with poor sanitation leading to rat infestation, "plague in New Mexico has increasingly occurred in more affluent areas, a result of continued suburban and exurban development in enzootic plague foci." It's rich people who are helping to spread the plague these days, not the poor!
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/1/14-0564_article goes into more detail, and points to "performing common outdoor peridomestic work (e.g., cutting brush or chopping wood)" and "a result of contact with infected fleas that were brought into the home by indoor/outdoor pets" as the two largest vectors.
This isn't to say you shouldn't worry, only that more information might bring more focus into what you should worry about, and homelessness leading to plague should not be one of them.
(P.S. I'm an inveterate researcher. I tracked down these details in part because I enjoy it. I can totally understand how this style is outside the usual cocktail style discussion, which is all this topic really deserves, and don't expect or demand a comparable response.)
(P.S. I think its awesome, I love a person who explores the questions more deeply.)
I think you make an excellent point vis-a-vis homeless vs defenseless. My exposure to plague warnings has primarily been in the county and state parks around the Bay Area. The primary vector being fleas per https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/vbds/Documents/PreventingVB...
And of course the linked article talking about Coywolves and relating to their lack of fear of humans.
My thesis is that human/wildlife encounters will increase as the populations of these various species increase in response to greater success in living in urban and suburban areas. And my conjecture is that as a result of increased encounters there will be more incidents where the defenseless are harmed. Have not yet thought of a good way to test that hypothesis yet.
And that has also lead to exposure to racoons and bears both of whom are willing to cross paths with humans in order to scavenge food or food scraps.
Whether the coywolf actually has evolved into a distinct species is debated. Jonathan Way, who works in Massachusetts for the National Park Service, claims in a forthcoming paper that it has. He thinks its morphological and genetic divergence from its ancestors is sufficient to qualify. But many disagree. One common definition of a species is a population that will not interbreed with outsiders. Since coywolves continue to mate with dogs and wolves, the argument goes, they are therefore not a species. But, given the way coywolves came into existence, that definition would mean wolves and coyotes should not be considered different species either—and that does not even begin to address whether domestic dogs are a species, or just an aberrant form of wolf.
In reality, “species” is a concept invented by human beings. And, as this argument shows, that concept is not clear-cut. What the example of the coywolf does demonstrate, though, is that evolution is not the simple process of one species branching into many that the textbooks might have you believe.
This puzzled me as well. Do we not have a word for this? Is _subspecies_ really the word? In linguistics mutually intelligible but distinct `languages' are called dialects. Similarly is there a term for mutually interbreedable but distinct `species'?
> Similarly is there a term for mutually interbreedable but distinct `species'?
It's species or subspecies. Animal classification has always been a little bit fuzzy and has some legacy cruft laying around. Like wolves, coyotes, and dogs are distinct animals with different behaviors but are definitely capable of interbreeding.
Similarly is there a term for mutually interbreedable but distinct `species'?
There's not really any objective standard to draw the line between such populations. A clear line exists between populations that cannot reproduce, and there is probably something similar for populations that can reproduce but largely make sterile offspring (Ligers, Mules).
Technically until the "forthcoming" paper by Jonathan Way is published, and designated type specimens exist, it isn't clear what it is -- certainly not a new species or subspecies right now.
Fascinating. I have had a number of urban close encounters with coyotes in the west US, and the prospect of a similar animal but with less fear of human is certainly concerning.
Hybridization is super interesting from an evolutionary perspective. Two populations can evolve down very different paths. Evolving all sorts of new genes and adaptions. Then hybridization mixes it all up. And over time, the best combination of genes from both species will be selected for. Creating something more fit than either of the original species.
Not so fast with the evolutionary fantasies. If they can breed and produce fertile offspring, are they really different species? Maybe we've got the definitions wrong somewhere.
> If they can breed and produce fertile offspring, are they really different species?
Species are defined more-or-less arbitrarily. It's essentially impossible to come up with a meaningful definition of "species" because of the nature of biology.
Imagine a gigantic tree, beginning with the first organism billions of years ago, with every living thing that ever existed as a node. Now, for the sake of the thought experiment, imagine that none of the lines ever died out.
There's no way to really consistently draw a line between one node and another and say "these are two different species." We pretty arbitrarily decide "well, these two sets are sufficiently different so let's call them two difference species." Like sibling commenters noted, sometimes hugely different species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Sometimes extremely similar (and related!) species can't breed. Or sometimes they can but never will except under laboratory conditions.
We make this classification, so we can adjust the rules until our model fits reality at an acceptable level. So let's define species as groups of individual of a similar genotype. We were not able to define and measure genetic distances in the past, but now with the ability to read whole genomes, we can do just that.
> sometimes hugely different species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring
Then they are obviously not hugely different. Were we just comparing phenotypes when we decided to classify them as different species? Let's improve on that.
> So let's define species as groups of individual of a similar genotype. We were not able to define and measure genetic distances in the past, but now with the ability to read whole genomes, we can do just that.
How similar?
Consider the following: imagine that you assembled a gathering of all your ancestors in the male line for say, the past two million years. Let's say, for illustrative purposes, that the gap between each generation is twenty years. So you'd have 5 people to represent a century - you, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and your great-great grandfather. That makes 50 people per millennium, 500 people per ten thousand years, 5,000 people per hundred thousand years, and 50,000 people per million years. So two million years of ancestry gets you 100,000 people, the size of a small city, or about enough people to fit in the Rose Bowl stadium.
So really, not that many people in the grand scheme of things. Now line all those people up in order going all the way back to the first guy, who we'll just call Adam. The difference between Adam N and Adam N+1 is very small. There's no point at which you can say "Adam N is this species and Adam N+1 is that other species." But there's a hell of difference between you and Adam.
The same logic applies to life in general, the tree is just a lot bigger and messier and we're talking about distant cousins rather than ancestors, and some lines are extinct.
But going back to your proposed definition - similar genotype - we can have all kinds of bizarre situations. Say we require the genotype to be 99% similar. By this definition, we conclude that Adam M and N are the same species. We also come to the conclusion that Adam N and Adam O are the same species. But wait! Adam M and O are only 98% similar! What do we do - assign multiple species labels to the same individuals?
Species has proven a necessary and useful abstraction, but it nevertheless doesn't hold up well under scrutiny. That's fine, as long as we recognize its limitations.
> Then they are obviously not hugely different. Were we just comparing phenotypes when we decided to classify them as different species? Let's improve on that.
Genotypes certainly provide useful information, but they can also muddy the waters.
Assume that we take the definition of "any two organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring are the same species" as our preferred definition. (This has its own problems: for example, did you know mules sometimes are fertile, just not usually? Did you know it's conceivable that humans and chimpanzees can interbreed?) It is entirely possible for A and B to be distantly related genetically, yet able to interbreed, while A and C are closely related and unable to interbreed. "Can interbreed" is not necessarily a proxy for genetic distance.
Biologists often ignore the traditional "breed with fertile offspring" definition when it doesn't fit the facts on the ground. For example, the Smew[1] can hybridize with the Common Goldeneye. Not only are they different species, but they are different genus!
Evolution would be a change in the genetic foundation of that whole framework that makes an individual thrive in the environment. A change so big that it would ultimately lead to speciation.
Adaptation is done using existing mechanisms, with no new genetic changes besides the usual background noise. It never leads to speciation.
The Economist is worth the subscription. You know how you often read about something you know in the media and think ... "if they are getting this wrong, what else are they getting wrong?". I've noticed it happens quite a bit less with The Economist, and they write about a fairly broad range of subjects.
Quite the contrary, in writing concisely about a broad range of complex topics the Economist often passes off opinion or conjecture as fact and analysis. Compare their writing on the domestic politics of any country besides the US and UK to that country's own media and you will find it disappointingly shallow.
According to http://store.economist.com/FAQ.aspx
> The Economist is published weekly, 51 times a year, with the Christmas double issue remaining on sale for two weeks. The issue is dated Saturday and goes on sale each Friday.
I know from reading it semi-regularly that it comments on significant economic/political developments from around the globe. It does this by breaking the world in regions (Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas) and then choosing to the stories from that region. Elections, power struggles, wars, economic fortunes, social/political movements, biographical sketches. The Economist also has special features on a weekly basis that cover global topics in depth, could be Bitcoin one week, renewable energy the next, the €zone crisis another week, also scientific topics.
By necessity (because it is published weekly and because its scope is global) the regular news stories are not in depth but I wouldn't therefore call them shallow. They are condensed is the word I'd use. Maybe they lose a bit of nuance but that's understandable.
When they do scientific and technical articles I find that their fact-checking and research seems to frequently attain a very high quality. People have commented on this feature of The Economist here on HN. Only The New Yorker seems to be more fastidious. What you call opinion or conjecture is actually their editorial stance§. The Economist is unashamedly biased. They believe in the free markets and I would say have a very liberal (in the British/European sense of the word liberal) philosophical outlook. They often defend their values. To have values is to be biased. What's worse I think are publications that report the news and pretend they're unbiased, when you can tell they're not either by sins of omission or misreporting whether deliberate or not and slanted recounting.
§ I personally don't share their worldview, I am more socialist than they but I recognise that disagreement on values isn't the same as that "well, that's just, like, your _opinion_ man"
Whereas most other US/UK media don't cover the domestic politics of other countries at all. It not that surprising that it's not comparable local media. When they have such a broad coverage in a single weekly magazine there's no way they can match the coverage of media in that country, and this applies to the US and UK too. However this doesn't mean that their analysis is weak or that their perspective isn't useful. It's just that there's no way it can be in the depth of media that cover it every day.
As for passing off opinion as fact, that's not passing-off, it's just the house style which is opinionated in the news stories as well as leaders. This isn't something they try to hide.
The Economist is useful if you want to have an opinionated round up of the world's events, as well as regular long form special reports on topics in more depth. In particular, their editorial position is one that is uncommon in many countries.
When I lived in Italy, my (Italian) wife and I actually almost always enjoyed their reporting on Italy, as it often got to the heart of the matter in a much more succinct manner than the local papers.
I think it's a reasonably recent addition (last few months). You can also click the domain suffix after an article title to see all pages submitted from that source (e.g., all articles from The Atlantic, etc).
There are coyotes in the northern part of Nova Scotia that have attacked lone hikers. A woman was killed, in fact a few years ago, and there have been numerous scary encounters in which the animal creeps closer and closer to a wary human, much like a predator approaching its prey.
The coyotes in this part of Canada are said to have interbred with dogs; it's not clear that these are the wolf-coyote-dog hybrids described in the article, but anyway these animals harassing hikers have been hanging out in the forested national park, as wolves would do.
Park rangers have tried to control the population, with varying results. Simply shooting a few of the coyotes actually can backfire; it seems to stimulate larger litters to replenish the population.
We might have to return to the pioneer approach of shooting them on sight, and hope this instills a healthy fear of humans as they once had. It's good having them around, because they control the rodent population which is a vector for disease bearing ticks and other problems. We just don't want them stalking our children in the local park.