Expert: Dana Krempels, Ph.D. - 9/20/2009

Question
As I am almost 63 years old, I can assure you this is not for my homework. The question is:  do "real" coyotes ever come in pure black? I live in upstate NY, where coyotes have been making something of a comeback in recent years.  Friends of mine have been seeing a black coyote on their semi-rural property -- not grayish or brindle or variegated in any way but solid black like a lab.  Based on my admittedly less than expansive knowledge of canid genetics, I think there's got to be some black dog mixed in there since black would not be an adaptive color for "real" coyotes.  My friends are very attached to some romantic idea of this individual black coyote while I am trying to tell them that when coyotes live on the fringes of urban areas like ours, mating with tame and/or feral dogs is inevitable. What do you say?

Answer
Dear Mary,

While there's a possibility the coyotes in the area have hybridized with local dogs, coyotes in suburban areas are far more likely to kill and eat domestic dogs than they are to mate with them.

It's also unlikely that the black coloration of a domestic dog would be dominant to the wild agouti coloration of the coyote.  So although a black coyote would be very rare, it's possible your friends have a hypermelanistic animal on their property.  You can find a nice overview of this phenomenon here:

http://phenotypic-blog.blogspot.com/2008/12/gallery-melanism.html

and there's even a picture of a melanistic coyote.

Many different species of mammals can have mutant versions of the agouti allele that, when inherited in two copies, will be expressed. The appearance of a melanistic individual would suggest that your local coyotes are engaging in a bit of inbreeding--possibly because the population is relatively small and isolated.

Hope that helps.

Dana