Wolves vs Coyotes

Source A subordinate male wolf peeled off a winter elk kill at a dead sprint, ran down a coyote in the open snow, broke its spine with a single bite, dropped the body where it fell, and trotted back to the carcass without eating a mouthful.That sequence was documented repeatedly during the first years of wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone, and it tells you everything about how the hierarchy of the northern Rockies actually functions.For seventy years, from the mid-1920s until 1995, there were no wolves in Yellowstone. The last ones were shot, trapped, and poisoned out under federal predator control programs, and the moment they were gone, the coyote population restructured itself into something the valley had never seen before. Coyotes in wolf-free Yellowstone did not behave like the nervous, skulking animals you see in places where wolves still operate. They got bigger. They started forming larger packs. They began hunting cooperatively, taking down prey that coyotes in other…