Endlings: Florida Panther - Oct 28

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, which is why I wanted to talk about Riordan and Oshiro’s ‘Court of the Dead’ novel (CoD), when I realized that it was not that different from the Florida panthers. Say what?

This week, ‘Bizarre Beasts’ released the episode about the Florida panthers – the wild cats, not the sports’ team and, again, it is a straightforward retelling of the Wiki page, plus an audio quote of Ms. Betty Osceola, an important person among the Miccosukee Native Americans. She is talking, to nobody’s surprise, about the Florida puma, and-

-And, yes, the obligatory statement: the North American ‘panther’ is another name for the puma, Puma concolor; it is only a distant relative to the ‘true’ panthers – the jaguar and the leopard; its’ closest relatives are the cheetah and the jaguarondi, a little-known wild cat that doesn’t look anything like the jaguar. Pause.

…All cats resemble one another; the differences between a tiger, a puma, a bobcat, and a housecat are mainly due to their sizes; there are few specialists as there are among the bovids, for example, or the rodents. This allows the felines to be very successful carnivores, and the puma is one of them; it is still the top feline carnivore in North America west of Mississippi. In the east, it is another story, as only the state of Florida still has any in the wild. This group of pumas was shrinking fast, due to inbreeding, so the U.S. government brought several pumas from Texas to fix this – and they did. But because the Florida wild themselves are shrinking, the pumas there are still dying-out and people need to fix this situation – just watch the BB episode for yourself. Stop.

So, here is the situation – after the series’ premiere that talked about the potential recreation of the passenger pigeon (done by a completely different narrator), and the dodgy episode about the dodgy silphium plant, BB hit its stride – the Florida panther episode is straightforward and simple, with nary a problem; it is delivered in a touching, poignant manner that is supposed to resonate with its’ audience – and perhaps it does. Only, is it enough to make the latter care enough to do something, to be affected by the BB delivery? That is the question.

On the other hand, we have ‘The Court of the Dead’ novel, where Will and Nico (a homosexual WASP couple) team-up with Frank and Hazel (a heterosexual POC couple) to help many monsters who don’t want to be evil, defeat a group of villains that are quite reminiscent for J-Ro’s Ministry of Magic in her HP books. These days she is keeping quiet (for her own reasons), but Mr. Riordan is going full speed ahead!..

Of course, he might not have a choice – when he stopped featuring sexual minorities and the like in his YA novels (‘The Trials of Apollo’ series), the price for his books fell to a flat $10-$15 dollars a book, that is very cheap by modern standards, and perhaps even a financial loss. Therefore, if Mr. Riordan wants to stay in the green (and work for Disney), he has to toe the party line, and if not, then just look at Gina Carano – she did not, and so she is gone.

Therefore, again, Mr. Riordan continues to release progressive and forwards-facing books; the problem here is that the society may not care; these days, the Americans are highly individualistic, and care only about what they think; a book, no matter how well-written, is not enough on its’ own to change their opinion – you need federal support to do so. In the U.S. In particular, this is a chancy and an unlikely thing to have or to manifest, and so that is that. ‘The Court of the Dead’ remains an inert, almost impotent, almost pointless and unrequired YA novel that does not do anything, or does not affect anyone, just as the ‘Endlings’ series of BB do – or don’t do. Sad, isn’t it? That is real life, however. It sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

 

Endlings: Silphium - Oct 21

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the silphium plant instead. Pause.

This is a somewhat different topic from my usual discussions, so, firstly, what was the silphium plant, beyond the obvious? The honest answer may surprise you: no one knows. It died out fully, presumably, during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, and it was supposed to be a spice that improved the taste of food and an aphrodisiac.

What could it have been? Jonathan Drori in his book “Around the world with 80 plants” calls it a plant of the Ferula genus, but others suggest the genus Thapsia instead; still others proclaim that silphium was not a plant in the Ferula genus, but rather asafoetida, latex gum, made from the roots of such plants. Pause.

The depictions of this plant exist, but they are stylized, and do not fully match the depictions of the extant Ferula & Thapsia plants; that would not be wrong, as silphium could have been its’ own species, but as Ms. Suta at BB pointed out, the depictions of silphium overall show it having stems and leaves of one plant, flowers of another, and fruits of yet a third, making it something of a chimera, then… Wait, what?

The word ‘Chimera’ has several meanings, but we’re interested in the most well-known: a Greek imaginary monster, so ridiculous that it could not have existed for real, as it had a leonine head, a caprine body, and a serpentine tail. Not even the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the Chimera was ever real, and neither are its’ descendants, ‘lesser chimeras’, the children of human imagination.

Silphium, unfortunately for some, seems to share the Chimera’s baseline traits: a mixture of features of different species, though plant, not animal. This is important, as while people usually know plenty of animal species, the species of plants are more obscure, and one often needs a lot of botanical experience to differentiate between, say, an American basswood, a European linden, and a cultivar of either one of them. You can say: “This beast looks like a tiger, but it is not a tiger, because it has [insert traits here]”, and even complete homebodies will identify it correctly as a lion, a leopard, or even a jaguar. However, if you say “This plant looks like a fennel, but it is not a fennel, because…” then identifying it becomes much harder, because of the obvious. In addition, people said that “silphium looks like a Persian herb, but it is not the same because it tastes differently”, eh?

Gastronomy, now, is something else. People also say “The sauce for the goose is the sauce for the gander”, but people had different tastes in food since the Stone Age, and food preparation is an important variable, too. The Persian Ferula species might have tasted worse than the Libyan silphium did, or it might not have been. Pause.

…Libya is a reason why I have paused, too – you know what else Libya is associated with? The “Odyssey” – Homer put his Lotus-eaters and their Lotus tree there. Like silphium, people argued about the identity of the Lotus tree for a while now; there are several RL plant species that fit the identity of this mythical plant, but not entirely, just as it is with silphium.

Could silphium been a myth, just like how the vegetable lamb and the unicorn are? Technically yes, but there are plenty of evidence that it did exist, right? Nero received the last stalk of it, (what he did with It is another matter entirely), and The Julius Caesar supposedly had much more in his treasury, but the problem with such declarations that by now they are just historical anecdotes, where separating fact from fiction is simply hard. JC might have really had ‘1500 pounds of laser’ in his treasury, or he might not have – now it is hard to tell.

(Silphium is also called laser or laserwort, but the plants of the genera Laser & Laserpitium are not related to it at all. Fun!)

These days, of course, separating truth from fake news can be done easily enough, but in the Ancient period? Not so much, and silphium’s obscurity made it worse. Even the reasons of its’ extinction are conflicting: Johnathan Drori proclaimed that it was the overharvesting, but Ms. Suta at BB suggests that overgrazing and the desertification that follows were to blame instead.

Now, since we’re talking about ‘Bizarre Beasts’, listen – BB does not do wholesale cheating, but it can alter its performance accordingly; the ‘Endlings’ premiere, the passenger pigeon episode, was done grandly, with a guest speaker, and the BB staff sending out tiny plastic pigeons afterwards. The silphium episode, on the other hand, was much more subdued and restrained; Ms. Suta moved on quickly enough to talk about the general ‘extinction is bad and why’ topic, and the episode was about 10 minutes long, almost 30% shorter than the passenger pigeon piece. Why?

Because BB did their research and realized that underneath all the historical anecdotes and culinary discussions might be a chimera – a plant that never was as it was described; it existed – it might still exist – in another way entirely, but the way Pliny and friends described? It never been.

Finally, getting back to the silphium’s extinction – could it have been saved? (If it was a real Libyan plant?) Again, we get more ambiguity – Drori suggests that silphium was very hard to move and translocate, but…

On one hand, this sort of operation is hard to do, even now – only a few years ago people tried to introduce African cheetahs to India; the Indian government was difficult, (and when the cheetahs were introduced, they died out in India quite quickly). In addition, when it comes to translocating just some of India’s only Asiatic lions, (they live in the Gir forest; from the genetic P.O.V., they are a part of the leonine subspecies that live in West and Central Africa), India flat-out refused. Things could have gone in any way, but then the Donald’s government partially alienated Modi’s India, it turned from the U.S. to RF and CPR, so now the West are not bothering India with their rewilding projects, lest it gets worse. Bully, and yes, translocating silphium from Libya to other countries might have been just as hard, but on the other hand, the Roman republic/empire of that time was much less concerned about PR; if there was silphium in Libya, and it was profitable, they would have done something about the status quo – but they did not. Maybe because there really wasn’t anything profitable in Libya, not even silphium? Until time machines become available to the public, we will never know.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

Endlings: Passenger Pigeon - Oct 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Endlings’, the Bizarre Beasts’ (BB) not-a-spin-off, instead. This episode’s topic – the passenger pigeon.

Some time ago, BB produced a promoting video of this event, where two women, Ms. Suta and Ms. Green, painted/colored a bunch of small plastic pigeon models and discussed the passenger pigeon’s Wikipedia article. It was not quite a scam, but it felt almost like one. This time, it is different – a completely new narrator, (and of a male gender too) discussed the passenger pigeon, why it died out and if it can be brought back.

…No, Colossal Biosciences (CB) are not behind it; this time, it is a different company, who claims that it will bring the passenger pigeon back, (in a manner of speaking) by 2032. Right now, it is October 2025. This means, that the company (Let’s call it RR), puts a ‘time stamp’ on its’ rewilding project – in 6 slash 7 years, few people can remember about RRs’ promise to bring the passenger pigeon back if RR chooses to go for the obscure approach… Interesting, and kind of suspicious.

The actual process of ‘bringing back the passenger pigeon’ is not too different from how CB plans to bring back the giant moa: CB plans to accomplish their project by combining the DNA of the emu and one of the tinamou species, while RR plans to combine the DNA of the passenger pigeon (it can be recovered, apparently), with that of its’ closest relative – the band-tailed pigeon – and inject the combo into the rock pigeon’s eggs…

As we discussed in the past, a tinamou-emu hybrid do not make a moa, especially a giant one. As for the pigeons, the passenger pigeon was a part of the Columbinae subfamily, the typical pigeons and doves in layperson’s terms, but it had its’ own genus and kept to itself; since at its’ peak the passenger pigeon numbered in millions, this was easy.

The band-tailed pigeon, meanwhile, belongs to the American pigeon genus that consists of 17 species, all of which are more closely related to each other than to the other birds, so what makes the band-tailed pigeon so special in regards to the passenger pigeon? The video does not tell us.

This brings us back to the passenger pigeon. It stood out from the rest of its’ pigeon and dove cousins by, well, the obvious. It lived and bred in bulk. It fed in bulk. It was usually in motion, looking for new food sources, (mostly grains, nuts, fruits, and the like). It was much more aerodynamic than many other pigeons – and it did not seek human cities to live in, unlike some other pigeons and doves. Pause.

…You take – intentionally or unintentionally – those features away, and the result is not a passenger pigeon, but some other bird. Pause.

There is no indication that RR intends to do this, but their process has the passenger pigeon DNA combined with the band-tailed pigeon’s, and perhaps the rock dove’s as well. There is no indication that the passenger pigeon’s DNA will be dominant, but if it will be…

…If the passenger pigeon DNA will be dominant, then the new bird will try to live like the extinct passenger pigeon did, which includes breeding and living in bulk. Will the 2030s North America be able to sustain this kind of population? Probably not without some massive landscape rewilding. Will the American society and government be willing to do this sort of massive landscape rewilding instead of building new urban centres? Probably not. And without large tracts of wild North American woodland, the new passenger pigeon will die out again, that’s the bottom line, unless…

…Unless it is being recreated not for rewilding purposes but for commercial ones, in which case the enthusiasm and the support for RR’s passenger pigeon project will drop. Listen, pigeons may not be as thoroughly domesticated as ducks and chickens, but they are domesticated and bred – for good looks, for mail carrier service, and for flesh and feathers too; we do not need another pigeon species/breed/GMO in the mix.

Let us pause and take a deep breath. The RR passenger pigeon project comes with options. It may work and we will have the new passenger pigeon – but we will not be ready for it and it will die out. It may sort of work, and will have a new genetically modified pigeon, which may act like the passenger pigeon, or not, for both the band-tailed and the rock pigeons belong to different genera than the passenger pigeon did, and both act – and look, and are built – differently from the passenger pigeon. Alternatively, the RR project will just fizzle out in the next 6-7 years, and we will have no new pigeon for our troubles.

Sigh. The narrator at ‘Endlings’ himself was rather sceptical of the passenger pigeon project; he tried his best to sell it to the audience, but he couldn’t fully do it. (The fact that he knew that most of us would forget about this video by the end of the week probably played a role too). The details of successfully bringing the passenger pigeon back to the U.S. are too many and he did not appear to have all of the answers – RR did not give it to him. Stop.

So, in conclusion. CB’s rewilding projects are exuberant and showy, but they do put CB into the spotlight, and CB cannot weasel out of this too easily. RR’s approach, on the other hand, allows them to do exactly that, and it is not an improvement over CB’s approach, sadly…  Looks like the rewilding projects/concepts/etc. in the West are in for some bad times…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Marvel Zombies - Oct 4

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Jane Goodall is dead. Let us talk about something else – say, the now released Marvel™ Zombies?

Yeah, no. Marvel™ Zombies is not bad, but-

-But, first, again, it is a comb-over. Alongside the F4 film, set in an entirely different universe, Disney/MCU released ‘Ironheart’, the adventures of Riri Williams, and it was bad. Politically incorrect as well, and Disney, in all of its’ incarnations, including Marvel, hates this. Therefore, it released ‘The Eyes of Wakanda’, another online miniseries, and they were not bad, just rushed, as we have discussed earlier. Consequently, once the dust settled, and the bad taste of ‘Ironheart’ vanished, Disney/MCU released Marvel™ Zombies, a spin-off of the previously released ‘What if?’ a Marvel universe where everything is as bad as possible, and oh, all that angst! …Somehow, Disney/MCU are in no hurry to get rid of them, and how does this mini-series end? Why, it is with Riri Williams! Pause.

Disney can be stubborn and sneaky – or so it thinks. In the SW universe, the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ (movies 7-9) and how Disney/SW handled them, fractured the SW fan base and caused a lot of damage to the franchise, and what did Disney/SW do? Release ‘The Mandalorian’ series, which were a hit (despite their own problems, cough), and the S3 season of the series? (‘The Book of Boba Fett’ does not count), showed how the SW of the sixth film’s finale became the SW of the seventh film’s premiere. The fan base realized this clearly enough, and the reactions were mixed. Disney/SW did not despair, and are releasing a feature film sequel to the now-finished series in the near with a trailer that is clearly showing that the Empire (aka the First Order) is coming back. How that film will go we will have to wait and see. So how does this connect to Disney/Marvel?

Just as Disney used – or tried to use – ‘The Mandalorian’ to fix the fans’ issues with the Disney SW vision, it seems to be trying to use Marvel™ Zombies to fix the fans’ issue as to how they view Riri ‘Ironheart’ Williams. In SW, ‘The Mandalorian’ did not quite work as how Disney thought it would work, and in Marvel, the same thing can be said about Zombies: they probably will not work as to how Disney wanted them to work. Riri Williams is still disliked by the fans.

Unlike ‘The Mandalorian’, of course, the Marvel fans can easily dismiss Marvel™ Zombies – they are not part of MCU, but an alternate universe, not unlike the 2025-F4 film. In this case, of course, not unlike the AAA series (remember Aggie-poo?) Marvel™ Zombies become just a waste of Disney/Marvel time and resources that would be better used in other means. Ah well, Disney – in all of its’ branches and affiliations always did have more money than common sense… Real life is still worse – just look at the Philippines and their earthquake… Oh, wait, they were overlooked in favor of the Donald’s latest rant – but that is another story…

For now, though, this is it – see you all soon!

CB and the dodo bird - Sep 19

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and CB (i.e. Colossal Biosciences, if someone is confused), is intent on making it worse, apparently.

With the grey/dire wolves, they actually have something: three grey wolf puppies (Arctic wolf subspecies, most likely), with some biological & anatomical modifications that are supposed to make them more like the extinct dire wolves. Lately, the news of those three are rare, hopefully, then, they have not died on CB’s watch.

With the moa birds, CB ignored the fact that we still have samples of the moa birds’ skins, feathers, and the like, and proclaimed that they will hybridize the Australian emu with the South American tinamous, and release the new hybrids into the New Zealand wilds. This movie is of a dubious legality, but the fact that there is no guarantee that the resulting hybrid ratites will be viable supersedes that. Therefore, lately, the commotion around the would-be revived moa birds is dying down, and CB’s celebrity sponsors, such as Sir Peter Jackson, (who made the ‘Hobbit’ and LotR movie trilogies), are keeping quiet.

Now, (September 2025), CB is launching yet another proclamation: they recovered some sort of primeval pigeon gene that will allow them to recreate the dodo. CB just needs chicken eggs. Pause.

The dodo were pigeons. They were very specialized pigeons, they had their own subtribe, and their closest relative was the solitaire, another specialized flightless species that died in the 17^th century as well. Their closest living relatives belong to the pigeon tribe Raphini, whose members are relatively big and bulky, especially for flying birds.

…The Columbidae birds (pigeons, doves, etc.) come in two main varieties: sleek and streamlined, or big and bulky. The dodo and the solitaire were two extremes of the second variety, but their living relatives, such as the Nicobar pigeon and the crowned pigeons, also tend to be heavyset, though nowhere as extreme as their extinct kin was. Where do the chickens enter?

Nowhere, that is the thing. Chickens are gamebirds, members of the Galliformes order, completely separate from the aforementioned pigeons, doves and co.; the chicken and the pigeon may look superficially similar to each other, but they are just as closely related as the red fox and the hedgehog – i.e. not at all aside from the most basic ties. To use chicken eggs (and genes?) to bring back the dodo is about as logical as using elephants to bring back the Smilodon.

As for the primeval pigeon genes/genomes/etc. …The name alone is rather unfortunate and populistic – and also vague and generalized. CB gives no concrete guarantee that using this technique will bring back the dodo precisely and not something else entirely. A creation of a brand-new pigeon species, flightless or not, would be exciting, but it would not be re-wilding, not really. Rather, it would be playing God with life (with birds, to be more specific), and that is something else. Of course, whether CB would go this course, and not just take the sponsors’ money and run, is another question…

So, to recap: in a matter of years, in less than a decade, CB went from something respectable to half-frauds and half-madmen, who have done science in general, and rewilding in particular, a bad service indeed. To make matters even worse for them, there is no real source of dodo DNA – a head and a leg is all that remained of a rather enchanting RL species; pity that it could not co-exist with humans and their companions, (such as domestic pigs turned feral, and rats). CB – or anyone else – just would not be able to acquire dodo genes at all, and what they are offering instead may just suffer from a bad, populist name, or perhaps CB is just pulling a completely banal, ordinary, con. The future will show. Real life seriously sucks, sometimes.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

 

'Anaconda'-2025 movie trailer - Sep 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, (mostly), so let us talk about the trailer to the 2025’s ‘Anaconda’ movie instead.

The original ‘Anaconda’ franchise was about people who came to the South American jungle for various reasons, and most of them would be eaten by an oversized anaconda (one or several) during the run time of the films, (there are several). Therefore, what makes this franchise better than the ‘Coyotes’ (remember them)?

The movies of the ‘Anaconda’ franchise, (including the one coming up in 2025), do not take themselves seriously and are not going for realism (or social commentary) the way that ‘Coyotes’ (and ‘Death of a Unicorn’) do. Even the trailer shows that the movie is going to be ridiculous and hilarious in a good way, and the completely unreal anaconda is a part of it.

The green anaconda might be the biggest modern snake; only the reticulated python of the Asian tropics might be able to match it; and the king cobra, of course, is always worth a mention, but the king cobra is a venomous snake among its’ other qualities, while the anacondas are constrictors.

‘Anacondas’ are used as a plural because ‘anaconda’ is a name of a genus of constrictor snakes, also known as the water boas. Just how many species of anaconda there actually are, is debated; two are known for sure – the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the yellow (Eunectes notaeus) are confirmed and recognized; the rest are up to debate, (and one is a fossil species anyhow, which just makes everything more complex).

Usually, the people talk about ‘THE anaconda’, or, more precisely, the bigger and more massive green anaconda of Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Suriname and Bolivia; the smaller yellow anaconda lives mainly more to the east (the two species do co-exist in Brazil), and the rest of the anaconda clan do not matter right now. What matters is that the green anaconda can be big and impressive, yet it is nowhere near the size of the mythical snake monsters that haunt the West imagination ever since the Europeans began to colonize South America. The South American rainforest is larger than life even now, so naturally it has to be inhabited by larger than life monsters. The Native Americans of South America agreed, but their monsters are much less realistic than the oversized anaconda of the European colonists and their descendants is, so let us put them aside too.

Besides the CGI Titanoboa wannabe, the trailer shows the cast handling (and accidentally killing) some other non-venomous snake, probably a boa constrictor. When put face to face, the boa is much slimmer and smaller than the green anaconda is, but like all the constrictor snakes, it has a mouthful of hook-like, needle-sharp, backwards pointing teeth, and it can deliver very painful and bloody bites too, so it should never be taken for granted.

…The cast go to the American tropics with a ‘movie budget’ under 10 000 dollars. Again, there is no realism; they want to make an ‘indie film’ (a movie within a movie – that is quite clever, in fact); so why not go to Florida, (or perhaps California) is unknown. As RL shows, there are plenty of escaped pythons, (some of which are quite large), in Florida, so an anaconda would fit in as well, but no – it is South America or bust. Anything else?

Just that after their boa is lost (it falls in the water, where the piranhas get it, or the boat propeller does, or something), the cast go into the rainforest to find a replacement snake. Suspension of disbelief and all, but the way they were doing it would have resulted in them finding a venomous snake instead, most likely, and most of the South American venomous snakes are pit vipers, too. Just think rattlesnakes without the rattles, really. (In all of South America lives a single rattlesnake species – all the rest are natives of North America instead). A bite from anyone of them would have been bad – period. In a certain light, the cast of the ‘Anaconda’-2025 are lucky that the snake they confronted was a non-venomous type.

And again, given just how unrealistic this movie’s snake monster is, it just as well could have been a giant bear, (the spectacled bear of South America is not as large as the brown bear is, but it can kill adult livestock with blows of its’ paws), or even a horde of orcs – why not? How is a kaiju-sized snake more realistic than a horde of orcs?

It is not, but the cast make it work. Even in the trailer, they are clearly having fun and are not careening all over the place as ‘Coyotes’ script (and cast) do. ‘Anaconda’-2025 does not have any ‘special’ message as the other film does, but I daresay that it will be more enjoyable and fun to watch than ‘Coyotes’ will be.

…And as for ‘Marvel™ Zombies’, coming to the viewers on Sep 24, 2025? Looks as if they are designed to cover up for the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ just as the ‘Eyes’ did for ‘Ironheart’. Again: ‘Ironheart’ was bad, perhaps not as bad as Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake, but still bad, hitting all the right notes in all the wrong ways. For Disney, MCU, and the rest, good relationships with Afro-Americans are important, so they covered-up (and replaced) ‘Ironheart’ with ‘Eyes’.

However, ‘Eyes’ themselves were something of a rushed job, and people have felt it. Disney/MCU do not like confrontations, so they are using ‘Zombies’ to cover-up ‘Eyes’. ‘Zombies’ themselves, of course, are strongly reminiscent of ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale, when the heroes of Westeros found themselves confronting the Night King and his cohorts, including the walking dead – but let’s wait until Sep 24, 2025, to see the ‘Marvel™ Zombies for ourselves first).

…And yes, in early 2000s, ‘Animal Face-Off’ had a ‘jaguar vs. anaconda’ episode where the anaconda won. Sadly, it is only slightly more realistic than the upcoming ‘Anaconda’-2025 film will be, so let us discuss it some other time.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

'Coyotes' the moviie trailer - Sep 9

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then I watched the trailer for the upcoming 2025 ‘Coyotes’ movie and realize that Hollywood can suck even worse. Let us discuss.

First, why wolves are known to be man-eaters (in the past, however distant), and coyotes are not? Frankly because they do not have the strength. A grey wolf (not to be confused with several other canine/lupine species) and a coyote look superficially similar, but the wolf is much more formidable.

A coyote – on average – is about 1 m in length, (without the tail) and weighs about 16 kg. A grey wolf, on the other hand, is about 1.5 m in length (also without the tail) and weighs about 60 kg. Most of this weight comes from muscle, and a wolf’s skull and jaws are wider and stronger than those of the coyote are; a coyote is more of a precise strike carnivore, and a grey wolf aims for greater mass damage instead.

Again, how do carnivorous mammals kill? In general, (there are always exceptions), they either go for a precise strike (on the throat, more rarely on the muzzle or even the skull), or, conversely, they bite and tear – tear off pieces of flesh, live… You need physical strength in both of these scenarios, of course, but the second one requires a much stronger bite, and a much stronger (and durable) body to handle such rough hunting. Lions, spotted hyenas, and grey wolves have it, and they all hunt big prey – African buffalo, antelopes, and deer (including the elk and sometimes the moose), in case of the wolves.

By contrast, the jackal and the red fox, the coyote and the striped & brown hyena do not normally hunt big animals; they prefer to scavenge, or to eat smaller prey, such as rodents, rabbits, and hares. The hyenas, true, have a more powerful bite than their canine counterparts do, but they are still at half the size of the spotted hyena, and in general defer to it, when they encounter it.

The ancestor of the more successful spotted hyena drove the ancestors of the striped and brown hyenas into the African deserts, and sort of forced the ancestor of the aardwolf to become an obligate insectivore – but we digress.

…Only not, for in North America the relationship between grey wolves and coyotes isn’t unlike that of… lions and spotted hyenas, for example, only more one-sided: the wolves’ tower over their coyote cousins, they are much stronger and heavier than the coyotes are, and they hunt in large packs, while coyotes hunt in pairs or alone. There is footage – from the Yellowstone Park – of wolves killing coyotes in packs. One on one, a wolf might let a coyote be; a wolf pack will make short work of it.

Enter humans. They drove the grey wolf to extinction in the North American East, and in the West its’ population is still reduced. The coyote adapted and flourished alongside humans, (as did the raccoon and the red fox)… but there were no cases of attacks on humans by any of them, (unless rabies or a similar factor was involved). The coyote may look like a wolf, generally, but unlike the wolf, it is not mentally wired to tackle prey as big as an adult human being… Enter the coydog.

It is exactly what it sounds like – it is a hybrid of a domestic dog, (either intentionally or a feral animal), and a coyote. Just like its’ bigger cousin the wolfdog, this hybrid seems to be quite fertile, (but then again, the question if the domestic dog an independent species, a subspecies of the grey wolf, or just a domesticated wolf with artificially derived physical differences is still open), and is doing well enough in North America.

The American coyote is not known to be a man-eater. The Australian dingo, (again, either a domestic dog turned wild, a separate species, a subspecies, or something else entirely), is. In addition, unlike the coyote it hunts in packs, as the grey wolf – or the feral populations of the domestic dog – do. More succinctly, the dingo is not as big as the grey wolf is, but it can be dangerous to people, and sometimes, it is.

Now, in North America, we get cases of domestic dogs interbreeding with grey wolves and especially coyotes – and unlike them, domestic dogs are not afraid of humans. Oh, they are peoples’ best friends, but with a metaphorical switch, they can be their worst enemies instead. When they attack, the results are bad and often deadly for the humans. You put in coyote, let alone grey wolf DNA into the mix, and the result is worse – but where does it leave the upcoming ‘Coyotes’ movie?

‘Coyotes’ apparently aims to be a social satire or something else, not unlike how ‘The Death of a Unicorn’ was. (Remember that sad pile of horse apples?) Fair enough, and the script is intentionally screwy and unrealistic – but the poor coyotes. Moreover, my point is that if they renamed the film ‘Coydogs’, and had not purebred coyotes, but coyote-feral dog crossbreeds, it would have worked just as well, and been more accurate, so there is that. The movie cast and crew decided that that would be too much effort, so we will probably end up with some anti-coyote hysteria, something that we do not really need right now – but it is real life. It sucks.

This is it for now – see you all soon!