SCOTTIE WESTFALL WRITES

I saw this post on the news blog today: http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/2009/09/are-red-wolves-on-prowl-in-south-walton.html

I watched the video, and then I went to the original column.

I don't think the original columnist got it right.

There are wolves in Apalachicola, Florida. However, they are on an offshore island owned by the Nature Conservancy. I'm sure they would have missed any wolves that left the island for the mainland. This island is used to breed endangered species in their natural environment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Vincent_Island,_Florida:

About half the animals in the video have white-tipped tails. I saw a coyote bitch with a white-tipped tail, but it was just a tiny flash of white. These animals have lots of white on them.

I think the animals are coydogs -- hybrids of dogs and coyotes.

In the subtropics and the tropics, coydogs are thought to be more likely than they are in temperate and colder climates. The short breeding season of the coyote in the colder regions prevents domestic dogs from breeding with them. They simply don't have a large enough window in which dogs could breed with coyotes. Of course, a male coyote breeding with a dog produces a coydog. The purists would argue that a male dog mating with a coyote bitch produced a dogote. Coydogs are very uncommon in my part of the country, but the coyotes are larger than one might expect.

Hybridisation could explain why these animals are larger than the normal Florida coyote.

But I don't think they are red wolves of any kind. Red wolves are carefully monitored to ensure purity of their bloodlines. That's why they are reintroduced to offshore islands where there are no dogs or coyotes to pollute the gene pool.