Exhibit untangles the connections between wolves, coyotes
By Mike Lynch
A wolf killed by a deer hunter in Cherry Valley in 2021 is now the centerpiece of a new exhibit at the New York State Museum in Albany.
“Canine Contrasts: Unraveling Wolves and Coyotes in New York” features taxidermy mounts and skulls of wolves and coyotes and tells the story of the Cherry Valley animal which was mistaken for a coyote by the hunter.
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That specimen, a full mount, is exhibited beside a coyote so that people can see the differences in the head shape and the paw and jaw sizes and other differences.
“It’s kind of an interesting comparison,” said Jeremy J. Kirchman, the museum’s Curator of Birds and Mammals. “It’s called Canine Contrasts because much of what you can read and learn is about the differences between these two species as closely related species.”
The exhibit delves into the differences in habitat between the two species and looks into the history of coyote-wolf hybridization that has made it difficult to distinguish the eastern coyote from wolves that wander into the Northeast from Canada and the Great Lakes region.
Wolves disappeared from New York in the 19th century due to hunting and loss of habitat. The few suspected wolves that have been discovered in the last century have been the subject of debate.
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The Cherry Valley wolf was killed in December 2021 by a 22-year-old hunter, who said he shot it in self-defense as the animal approached him.
The hunter thought he had a record-sized coyote, so he contacted the state Department of Environmental Conservation to have it evaluated.
Consequently, the DEC and independent wolf-advocacy groups had tissue samples genetically tested to determine if the animal was a wolf or coyote.
The DEC initially called the animal an Eastern coyote hybrid but tests at Trent University in Canada and Princeton University ultimately determined the animal to be a wolf from the Great Lakes region.
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Cherry Valley is 25 miles south of the Adirondack Park, which studies have shown has 6,000 square miles of wolf habitat.
In conjunction with the exhibit, Kirchman will be giving lunchtime presentations on July 17 and Aug. 14 on the topic. Both start at noon in the Huxley Theater.
Kirchman worked on a coyote study more than a decade ago with former museum curator Roland Kayes. He is now working on a paper with co-authors Robert Feranec and Bridgett vonHoldt to tell the story of the Cherry Valley animal and how it was determined to be a wolf through testing.
Feranec is the museum’s director of research and collections while vonHoldt is an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. It was vonHoldt’s work on the Cherry Valley animal that ultimately convinced the DEC to declare it to be a wolf.
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The three scientists hope to publish the paper within the next year.
“I feel like it needs to be peer-reviewed and be part of the scientific literature,” Kirchman said.
Yes, I’m sure it was self defense as Wolf attacks are so common….
I’ve encountered more than one wolf in the wild. One of which was so remote it is highly unlikely that it had encountered a human before. It was curious, it approached me, I was armed with a camera. It sniffed, I snapped, it identified me as not food or a threat and left. That was it. That’s how it works. Same thing with a brown bear the next day. Multiple times more threatening, frightening and dangerous but, same outcome. (These were not intentional encounters. I do not endorse or recommend that.) There is something to be said for keeping your cool and being familiar with the wildlife’s behavior that you might encounter. Wolves and bears have multiple body language and verbal means of communicating their intention and their attitude. Their presence does not automatically = threat.
Bingo.
Coyote are known to be very aggressive in NY state and aren’t protected.
It was hunting season and this young hunter thought it was a coyote.
He only contacted the DEC because he thought it was a very large coyote, not because it was a wolf.
The DEC thought it was a hybrid and only confirmed it was a wolf species with a genetic test.