The coyote Canis latrans; also known as the American jackal, is a canid native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the gray wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecological niche as the golden jackal does in Eurasia, though it is larger and more predatory.

The coyote is listed as least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to its wide distribution and abundance throughout North America, southwards through Mexico, and into Central America. The species is versatile, able to adapt to and expand into environments modified by humans. It is enlarging its range, with coyotes moving into urban areas in the Eastern U.S., and was sighted in eastern Panama (across the Panama Canal from their home range) for the first time in 2013.

The coyote is more closely related to the common ancestor of wolves and other canids (more "basal") than the gray wolf. As of 2005, 19 coyote subspecies are recognized. The average male weighs 8 to 20 kg (18 to 44 lb) and the average female 7 to 18 kg (15 to 40 lb). Their fur color is predominantly light gray and red or fulvous interspersed with black and white, though it varies somewhat with geography. It is highly flexible in social organization, living either in a family unit or in loosely knit packs of unrelated individuals. It has a varied diet consisting primarily of animal meat, including deer, rabbits, hares, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, though it may also eat fruits and vegetables on occasion. Its characteristic vocalization is a howl made by solitary individuals. Man is the coyote's greatest threat, followed by cougars and gray wolves. In spite of this, coyotes sometimes mate with gray, eastern, or red wolves, producing "coywolf" hybrids. In the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, the eastern coyote (a larger subspecies, though still smaller than wolves) is the result of various historical and recent matings with various types of wolves. Most recent studies show that most wolves contain some level of coyote DNA.

The coyote is a prominent character in Native American folklore, mainly in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, usually depicted as a tricksterthat alternately assumes the form of an actual coyote or a man. As with other trickster figures, the coyote uses deception and humor to rebel against social conventions. The animal was especially respected in Mesoamericancosmology as a symbol of military might. After the European colonization of the Americas, it was reviled in Anglo-American culture as a cowardly and untrustworthy animal. Unlike wolves (gray, eastern, or red), which have undergone an improvement of their public image, attitudes towards the coyote remain largely negative.

Coyote males average 8 to 20 kg (18 to 44 lb) in weight, while females average 7 to 18 kg (15 to 40 lb), though size varies geographically. Northern subspecies, which average 18 kg (40 lb), tend to grow larger than the southern subspecies of Mexico, which average 11.5 kg (25 lb). Body length ranges on average from 1.0 to 1.35 m (3 ft 3 in to 4 ft 5 in), and tail length 40 cm (16 in), with females being shorter in both body length and height. The largest coyote on record was a male killed near Afton, Wyoming, on November 19, 1937, which measured 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) from nose to tail, and weighed 34 kg (75 lb). Scent glands are located at the upper side of the base of the tail and are a bluish-black color.
The color and texture of the coyote's fur varies somewhat geographically. The hair's predominant color is light gray and red or fulvous, interspersed around the body with black and white. Coyotes living at high elevations tend to have more black and gray shades than their desert-dwelling counterparts, which are more fulvous or whitish-gray. 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 (bristly). Generally, adult coyotes (including coywolf hybrids) have a sable coat color, dark neonatal coat color, bushy tail with an active supracaudal gland, and a white facial mask. Albinism is extremely rare in coyotes; out of a total of 750,000 coyotes harvested by federal and cooperative hunters between March 22, 1938, and June 30, 1945, only two were albinos.

Hybrids of any combination tend to be larger than coyotes but smaller than wolves, they show behaviors intermediate between coyotes and the other parent's species. In one captive hybrid experiment, six hybrid pups from a male northwestern gray wolf and a female coyote were measured shortly after birth with an average on their weights, total lengths, head lengths, body lengths, hind foot lengths, shoulder circumferences, and head circumferences compared with those on pure coyote pups at birth. Despite being delivered by a female coyote, the hybrid pups at birth were much larger and heavier than regular coyote pups born and measured around the same time. At six months of age, these hybrids were closely monitored at the Wildlife Science Center. Executive Director Peggy Callahan at the facility states that the howls of these hybrids are said to start off much like regular gray wolves with a deep strong vocalization, but changes partway into a coyote-like high pitched yipping.
Compared with pure coyotes, eastern wolf-coyote hybrids form more cooperative social groups and are generally less aggressive with each other while playing. Hybrids also reach sexual maturity when they are two years old, which is much later than occurs in pure coyotes.

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services conducted a captive-breeding experiment at their National Wildlife Research Center Predator Research Facility in Logan, Utah. Using gray wolves from British Columbia and western coyotes, they produced six hybrids, making this the first hybridization case between pure coyotes and northwestern gray wolves. The experiment, which used artificial insemination, was intended to determine whether or not the sperm of the larger gray wolves in the west was capable of fertilizing the egg cells of western coyotes. Aside from the historical hybridizations between coyotes and the smaller Mexican gray wolves in the south, as well as with eastern wolves and red wolves, grays wolves from the northwestern USA and western provinces of Canada were not known to interbreed with coyotes in the wild, thus prompting the experiment. The six resulting hybrids included four males and two females. At six months of age, the hybrids were closely monitored and were shown to display both physical and behavioral characteristics from both species, as well as some physical similarities to the eastern wolves, whose status as a distinct wolf species or as a genetically distinct subspecies of the gray wolf is controversial. Regardless, the result of this experiment concluded that northwestern gray wolves, much like the eastern wolves, red wolves, Mexican gray wolves, and domestic dogs, are capable of hybridizing with coyotes.

In 2015, a research team from the cell and microbiology department of Anoka-Ramsey Community College revealed that an F2 litter of two pups had been produced from two of the original hybrids. At the same time, despite the six F1's successful delivery from the same coyote, they were not all full siblings because multiple sperm from eight different northwestern gray wolves were used in their production. The successful production of the F2 litter, nonetheless, confirmed that hybrids of coyotes and northwestern gray wolves are just as fertile as hybrids of coyotes to eastern and red wolves. Both the  and hybrids were found to be phenotypically intermediate between the western gray wolves and coyotes. Unlike the hybrids, which were produced via artificial insemination, the litter was produced from a natural breeding. The study also discovered through sequencing 16S ribosomal RNA encoding genes that the  hybrids all have an intestinal microbiome distinct from both parent species, but were once reported to be present in some gray wolves. Moreover, analysis of their complementary DNA and ribosomal RNA revealed that the hybrids have very differential gene expressions compared to those in gray wolf controls.

[size=8pt][font=verdana]general ; "it was as if nothing else"
RONAN LYNCH | GOES BY LAST NAME | MALE [HE/HIM]
MENTALLY A YOUNG ADULT | FORMER HUMAN
DEPUTY OF BLOODCLAN
AURORA X NIALL LYNCH | GENERATION 2
  —  remembers parents | uses the lynch surname
KNOWS LATIN, SPEAKS IT SOMETIMES
HAS INFREQUENT PANIC ATTACKS AND SUFFERS FROM NIGHTMARES

appearance ; "really mattered when i looked"
MELANISTIC WOLF | BODY IS MALE | DOES NOT INHABIT BIRTH BODY
  —  ronan has a muscular build, muscles and sinew rolling together to form something that looks effortless when moving. his eyes are blue, piercing, looking as if they can see into your soul. his fur is long, thick, and he can hold up in cold weather very easily. streaks of chocolate brown can be seen coloring his back but only because he did it himself before he came here. his paws are oversized, long nails extending from them, and his paws almost seem too big for his body. he has large antlers protruding from behind his ears which are black with white tips.

personality ; "into his eyes, because they were like"
loyal, truthful, overprotective, brave, courageous, independent
blunt, stubborn, angry, obsessive, compulsive, sometimes cruel
  —  ronan loves to be the center of attention during a fight, but when presented with a situation where he can't battle someone, he'll revert to being quiet, snarky, and sarcastic. he's very compulsive, often doing what he wants when he wants, and will stop at nothing to get his way. needless to say, he won't back down from a challenge or fight, and will defend himself to the bitter end. he's also very loyal, almost always angry at something or someone, honest to a fault, and blunt.

interaction ; "the sea: endless and turbulent"
HARD PHYSICALLY | MEDIUM MENTALLY | ATTACK IN #7C9577
  —  will instigate fights | will kill | will capture | will torture | will not show mercy
KNOWS HOW TO HEAL MINOR WOUNDS | KNOWS SELF DEFENSE | TRAINED
USES NO WEAPONS CURRENTLY
HAS DISCOVERED NO POWERS YET