[muawiyah]

The Eastern Gray Wolf has been thoroughly examined with in depth DNA evaluation and it's a mix of coyote, dog and wolf. Seems pretty successful too ~ not your incidental mating but a full fledged wolf-dog-ote!

These critters we're talking about are RACES ~ not even subspecies.

A Jackel is a subspecies of the same species as the wolf-dog-ote!

[allmendream]

The source I saw says they see “some populations” that contained instances of hybridization with coyotes.

Their mitochondrial DNA is distinctly wolf.

Wolves and coyotes are distinct species if species (a word humans made up as an imprecise guide to reality) is to have any meaning at all.

A swamp may well have many plants and features in common with a forest - and some forests may be turning into swamps and some swamps turning into forests - but that doesn't mean that “swamp” and “forest” mean the same thing.