aww... I've have reached my article limit.
Just click on hn's web link and then read the article through google.
Thanks for pointing that out. I never knew one could do that.
New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
61–70 of 146 posts
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#62I 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…
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.
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#63One 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…
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.
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 re…
Where do you live?
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#65The 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.
Four million years is recent? We split from chimpanzees three to six million years ago.
Yes, it is recent.
We are evolutionary newcomers.
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#66In 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 si…
Surely the first thing an anthropocene apex predator species need to do is not attack humans? Doing so would inevitably lead to complete extermination?
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#67The 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.
from wikipedia [1]:
> 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.
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#68Technically not a new species , rather a new subspecies .
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies
For domestic animals, we have the noun breed, as in breed of dog.
Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#69The 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.
Four million years is recent? We split from chimpanzees three to six million years ago.
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Re: New species combining wolf, coyote, and dog emerges in eastern North America
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of reasoning is fine until YOUR child get killed ...
Did you really just argue that if a snake were to kill your child, you would want the species eradicated? If an automobile driver were the cause of death instead, would you demand the removal of all automobile drivers? Or all automobiles? If your child were to drown, would you demand the removal of all swimming pools?
Oh common stop putting words in my mouth ...
When a specie is invasive and dangerous you thin it by removing the ones that are too close to human habitat, that's it.