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Escarpment Magaz ine Summer 2012
Originally, the coyote’s range was limited by the presence of this larger and more powerful
canid in the north and east of North America. To the south of grey wolf territory, another species,
the red wolf (Canis rufus), once lived. Very little is known about the natural history of this wolf
because its range and numbers were already severely reduced when scientific investigations
began in the mid 1800s. But its decline likely allowed the coyote to expand eastward in the
southern United States. The later decline of the grey wolf and extirpation of the red wolf made
way for the very adaptable coyote to expand its range into forests, agricultural areas, urban
ravines, and the backyards of eastern North America.
But to fully understand canid history, and therefore what is happening today, we need to look
back even further in time, to the fossil record. When Europeans arrived in North America, the
three large species of wild canids—the grey wolf, the red wolf, and the coyote—were already
here. The largest and most widely distributed was the grey wolf, a species whose large size
(averaging 36 kg), intelligence, and social nature made it well adapted as the major predator
of northern ungulates, or hoofed mammals, such as moose, deer, elk, caribou, and sheep. In-
formation from the fossil record indicates that the grey wolf, a species that evolved in the Old
World, made its way into North America via the Bering Land Bridge, becoming well established
in Alaska some 300,000 years ago. It did not appear south of the area covered by the Lau-
rentide Ice Sheet (which reached its most recent and maximum extent about 18,000 years ago)
until 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, when it is found in southern Alberta, southern askatchewan,
and the bordering US states. Gradually, the grey wolf spread east across northern Canada fol-
lowing the retreating ice sheet, the last remnants of which disappeared from Labrador 5,000
years ago.
With such a widespread distribution comes a considerable amount of geographic variation,
which caused the evolution of many different subspecies of the grey wolf. Originally thought to
be among them was Canis lupus lycaon, the wolf that originally occupied the region from east-
ernMinnesota to the Atlantic and from central Ontario to parts of the northeastern United States.
In recent years, some scientists have suggested that this subspecies is actually a distinct species,
the eastern wolf (Canis lycaon), closely related to or even the same species as the red wolf
(Canis rufus). Certainly the two look quite similar. In the past 300 years, due to habitat destruc-
tion and persecution, these eastern wolves have suffered a drastic loss in numbers and distribu-
tion and today are thought to exist only in central Ontario and the adjoining area of Quebec.
Unlike the grey wolf, the coyote and the red wolf originated in North America, likely shared a
common evolutionary history, and were already well established by the time the grey wolf be-
came one of the most widely distributed land mammals in North America (dating back 10,000
years). Common and widespread throughout the last 300,000 years, the coyote’s range ex-
tended fromAlaska to Pennsylvania and from Florida toMexico. Looking through fossil records,
it is clear that early coyotes were larger than today’s but over time there was a gradual transition
in size along with a reduction in the amount of territory they inhabited, down to that found by
Europeans when they arrived in western North America in the 1500s (see top map). Today’s
coyote in Western North America, which eats a variety of foods, including small mammals,
birds, berries, insects, and carrion, is the smallest of the canid species, weighing 7 to 14 kg.
The red wolf has a scant fossil history dating back to 10,000 years ago in Florida, Arkansas,
Texas, and Mexico but is also known from a number of archaeological sites in the eastern
United States. Based on these sites, we know that the red wolf was found in pine and broadleaf
forests throughout the southeastern United States from eastern Texas andOklahoma, to southern
Indiana and New Jersey. This wolf is larger (20 to 40 kg) and more robust than the coyote and
somewhat smaller and more delicately built than the grey wolf. It lives on small to medium-sized
mammals such as rabbits, hares, and birds, but can also take deer. A behavioural character
that separates it from the coyote is its habit of running with its tail out or up, similar to the grey
wolf. Presently the red wolf is endangered. It had vanished from the wild because of habitat
loss, hunting, and trapping but captive populations have been maintained since the 1970s and
some have been released into parts of the southeastern United States.
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