Coyote Skull

Brazos John said:

Thanks! That is very cool!
Did you set that up in your back yard or patio, or did you bring it inside?
My wife doesn't appreciate the intrinsic artistic touches I bring to our environ.
She hated my snake skeleton. Ants had picked it clean, but didn't disturb the ribs.

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Notchy Bob said:

Sort of reminds me of Lord of the Flies...

Don't feel bad about the identification. It's a cool skull, regardless of the species, and the conversation that followed your post has been great. Very informative.

I would go with some sort of swine for that skull. It's worth noting, though, that both wild and domestic animals are sometimes born with "birth defects," just as with some people. I guess this is just Mother Nature experimenting with evolution. However, it can complicate identification of their remains. There is a mythical creature in some Siouan people's legends called a shunka warak'in, which is said to resemble an enormous hyena. A wild critter preying on sheep in Montana a few years ago (2018) was eventually killed, and a lot of people wanted to believe it was one of those mythical beasts. However, DNA testing confirmed it was a wolf, with some unusual or variant physical features. There is a lot about the Montana shunka warakin on the web, easily found with a Google search.

I live in north central Florida. There were rumored to be a few coyotes in this area when I was a kid, in the late fifties and sixties. Now, there is no question. I live in the country, and I sometimes step out into the yard at night, just to get a look at the moon and stars, and I hear them yipping and howling in the distance. I see one now and then as road kill, but not very often. There is a 7,000+ acre state preserve near my place which does not allow hunting, but there are miles of hiking trails in it. I go out there every chance I get, and I've seen coyotes there several times, in broad daylight. My wife and I were out there a couple of years ago and a pair of them ran across the path just ahead of us. They were bigger than I thought they would be, and the coats had a reddish color. The native red wolves are long gone from Florida, but we wonder if there might be some introgression of red wolf genes in the local coyote population.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

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Tacitus said:

Notchy Bob, your mention of a shunka warakin caught my attention. A creature I had never heard of before.
Just this last Spring I sighted a creature that looked very much like a hyena in shape and size, with white and black fur. Its profile was very unmistakable hyena shaped. It is northwestern Montana, so obviously it could not have been a hyena. I assumed unconvincingly that it must be a deformed canine of some sort, most likely due to its size likely a wolf. Perhaps a malformed wolf similar to those which Native Americans saw. A more comforting explanation than I'm losing my marbles and starting "to see things".

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Horse said:

Nothing wrong with seeing things that aren't there. It's not seeing things that are there that will get ya.

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Tacitus said:

Notchy Bob, your mention of a shunka warakin caught my attention. A creature I had never heard of before.
Just this last Spring I sighted a creature that looked very much like a hyena in shape and size, with white and black fur. Its profile was very unmistakable hyena shaped. It is northwestern Montana, so obviously it could not have been a hyena. I assumed unconvincingly that it must be a deformed canine of some sort, most likely due to its size likely a wolf. Perhaps a malformed wolf similar to those which Native Americans saw. A more comforting explanation than I'm losing my marbles and starting "to see things".

Click to expand...

Brazos John said:

Thanks! That is very cool!
Did you set that up in your back yard or patio, or did you bring it inside?
My wife doesn't appreciate the intrinsic artistic touches I bring to our environ.
She hated my snake skeleton. Ants had picked it clean, but didn't disturb the ribs.

Click to expand...