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Man you don't know your coyotes thats for sure.

They woke me last night, killing something in the back field.

Well I have observed them myself at day and night at fairly close range, less than 200 feet away with plain eye sight and with 10X50 field glasses.

The coyote is a very opportunist feeder and he is very adaptable.

The genetic adaptation scientist thinks he sees evidence of a genetic change going on, but all that is going on is that the coyote is substituting garbage for carrion. This is a good example where in the belief or bias of a scientists is revealed and he sees evidence of a hypothesis.

Coyotes opportunists and will eat what is readily available. Mice, rats, ground squirrels, rabbits, carrion and a wide assortment of other mammals make up the bulk of their diet. Snakes and birds, as well as an occasional wild turkey or white-tailed deer fawn, also are preyed upon by coyotes.

Pups often eat a steady diet of grasshoppers in the late summer when they begin hunting their own food. Crickets, beetles and other insects are eaten by coyotes of all ages.

Coyotes like fruits and berries, such as mulberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild cherries. A thicket of ripening wild plums or a persimmon tree may be visited by coyotes regularly. Coyotes also like watermelons.

Coyotes are scavengers too. Coyotes eat table scraps, including vegetables, thrown out by farm families. In urban areas or around campgrounds, coyotes sometimes raid garbage cans for discarded scraps. Although coyotes do not cause a large problem to sweet corn growers, they sometimes pull down a stalk or two and nibble on the ears of corn.

Coyotes also feed on carrion. Following deer season, coyote droppings often are full of deer.

So much for the genetic coyote hypothesis.

Well I have observed them myself at day and night at fairly close range, less than 200 feet away with plain eye sight and with 10X50 field glasses.

I watched one hunt pheasants from our deck a couple of months ago, in plain daylight. He took off as soon as he saw me. That's one difference already between the coyotes in our area (rural Nebraska) which are shy; and Northeastern coyotes, which IME are much bolder.

The coyote is a very opportunist feeder and he is very adaptable.

None of this rules out genetic adaptation. The wolf and coyote share a recent common ancestor; they still can and do interbreed in the right circumstances. When you look at the difference between a wolf and coyote, particularly eastern Canadian wolves , you're already seeing the effect of evolution. Wolves - near-obligate hunters - are larger and more powerful, with very different behavior. Coyotes, as they relied less of hunting large herbivores, have become smaller. That will continue; the populations that have largely gone over to scavenging will become less shy of humans, evolve dentition that's more characteristic of omnivores and less of carnivores, become smaller, probably less seasonal in their breeding, etc..

Someone asked for a prediction; that's a prediction.