I know that dogs and wolves are basically the same thing, but waht about coyotes? Can a dog and a coyote make viable pups?
Well according to this site, coyotes are in the same family of dogs (same family and genus, only t he species differs), so I can’t see why a dog and a coyote couldn’t mate and produce puppies. BUT I suspect, that like a mule, the puppies would be infertile and incapable of reproducing themselves. But IANA vet. I am WAG.
CJ
These are my suspicions, but I think that things like rabbits, hares and jackrabbits can’t.
From the site you provided
Coyotes can breed with both domestic dogs and wolves. A dog-coyote mix is called a "coydog."
I suspect that my dog might be one of these, but I’m not sure.
As noted by bnorton, most or all members of the genus Canis can cross. Dogs, wolves, and coyotes are all interfertile and can produce fertile offspring. It is not overwhelmingly common, but it happens. With wolves and coyotes the crosses tend to be unidirectional for behavioral reasons ( female coyotes crossing w/male wolves, with the puppies subsequently backcrossing with wolves ) and some wide hybrid zones exist in North America.
As I’ve noted in a few previous threads, one on-going controversy is that of the Red Wolf, with some contending ( based on morphology and natural history, among other things ) that it is a “true” species, distinct from the wolf and coyote and others contending ( based in part on some molecular work ) that it is in fact merely an historical ephemera, consisting of a semi-stable population of wolf-coyote hybrids created by human impact on southeastern ecology in the 17th-19th centuries.
- Tamerlane
By the way, although wolves and coyotes are interfertile, almost no one considers them a single species. For instance they are far more distinct from each other molecularly, than say wolves and dogs ( who, as noted, a majority now lump together as a single species. )
- Tamerlane