If you spot a jet-black coyote on a trail camera in Georgia, Louisiana, or the Carolinas, you are not seeing a dog hybrid or a regional oddity. You are looking at the living genetic footprint of a wolf species that humans nearly destroyed.
What makes a coyote black?
The trait is called melanism — an overproduction of dark pigment, specifically eumelanin, that turns an animal’s coat black instead of the usual gray-brown. According to research published in BMC Zoology in 2022 by Dr. Joseph Hinton of the Wolf Conservation Center and colleagues, melanism was historically present in red wolves of the southeastern United States — not in coyotes, which across their historic western range show no black individuals at all.
The gene responsible did not appear in coyotes on its own. It was passed to them through hybridization.
The red wolf connection
Red wolves once occupied the forests and wetlands of the American Southeast. As humans hunted, trapped, and displaced them through the 19th and 20th centuries, their populations collapsed. That collapse had an unexpected side effect: it left ecological and reproductive openings that coyotes — historically a western species — began moving into.
As coyotes pushed eastward through East Texas, along the Mississippi River, and into the Southeast, they encountered the last remnant red wolf populations. The two species interbred. Prior to that eastern expansion, melanism was not found in coyotes. It was only after interbreeding with the red wolf, where melanism was common, that this trait began to appear.
Today the melanistic phenotype is extinct in red wolves, while occurring in coyotes and red wolf-coyote hybrids that now occupy the red wolf’s historical range.
How common are black coyotes today?
Research found melanism in coyotes across Alabama (1.9%), Georgia (3.6%), North Carolina (5.9%), and South Carolina (5.4%) — with 5.7% of all coyotes captured in the study being black. A separate count cited in the Wolf Conservation Center video places the figure at approximately 6%, consistent with those state-level findings.
The black coat is not randomly distributed across the landscape. Melanistic coyotes maintained larger home ranges and exhibited greater selection for areas with dense canopy cover and wetlands than did gray coyotes. In practical terms, they favor shady bottomland forests — the kind of dense, dark habitat where a black coat provides better camouflage.
Do black coyotes survive better?
The data suggests yes. Melanistic coyotes and hybrids experienced greater annual survival than did their gray counterparts. The Wolf Conservation Center video puts the numbers at 83% annual survival for black coyotes versus 64% for gray — a gap researchers attribute in part to the concealment advantage their dark coats offer under dense forest canopy, where hunters and other threats are harder to detect.
Despite that survival edge, black coyotes are not meaningfully different in body size and do not appear to be more effective predators of deer than gray coyotes.
Why a 19th-century rule explains it all
The underlying principle is called Gloger’s Rule — a long-standing observation in zoology that animals in warmer, more humid regions with dense vegetation tend to evolve darker coloration. This theory is supported by data collected from hundreds of coyotes, red wolves, and red wolf-coyote hybrids, showing that melanistic coyotes prefer environments with increased canopy cover like coastal bottomland forests.
The black coyote, in other words, is not an anomaly. It is Gloger’s Rule playing out in real time — accelerated by the near-extinction of a wolf.
What this means for conservation
This is an important reminder of how human actions can inadvertently influence wildlife genetics and distribution. The red wolf is now one of the most endangered canids on Earth, with only a small reintroduced population surviving in eastern North Carolina under federal protection. The melanistic coyotes of the Southeast carry a genetic signature of that species — a reminder that extinction rarely leaves the landscape unchanged.
The research underlying these findings was led by Dr. Joseph Hinton, currently affiliated with the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, and published in BMC Zoology (2022).
SOURCES & LINKS
- Hinton, J.W. et al. “The natural history and ecology of melanism in red wolf and coyote populations of the southeastern United States.” BMC Zoology, 2022 — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10127370/
- Wolf Conservation Center. “Exploring the Mystery of Melanistic Coyotes,” March 9, 2024 — https://nywolf.org/2024/03/exploring-the-mystery-of-melanistic-coyotes-insights-from-wolf-conservation-center-researchers/
- Deer Association. “A Wolf Among Us? How Black Coyotes Came to Be,” January 17, 2024 — https://deerassociation.com/a-wolf-among-us-how-black-coyotes-came-to-be/
- Original video transcript: YouTube, Wolf Conservation Center / Dr. Joe Hinton, trail camera footage shared by Daniel Simmons of Georgia
