#the goal is to one day study animals within Canis and write a full on paper

[canis-lupus-caspi]

I had a bit of an autism moment in the @biodiversesv discord (everyone go check it out, its great in there!) and I thought I would share here

Thinking about how there is no actual definition of what a wolf is. Because like, obviously, when you talk about wolves, most people think of the grey wolf and subsequent subspecies. But the red wolf is also discussed as a wolf despite not being a grey wolf subspecies (taxonomic designation of the red wolf is still up to slight debate, but more times then not they are described as being closely related but distinct from the grey wolf. Some still describe them as a hybridization of the grey wolf and coyotes, but other times they are seen as a separate species that has had recent interbreeding with coyotes)

The red wolf (Canis rufus) and the grey wolf (Canis lupus) are both still wolves, but are only in the same genus (Canis) which is most often associated with wolves but also includes all other canines, like coyotes (Canis latrans) and the golden jackal (Canis aureus). They are seperste from other canids, which include animals outside of the genus Canis but within the family Canidae, such as the red and grey fox (Vulpes vulpes and Urocyon cinereoargenteus) and the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus)

This also goes into how a species is not clearly defined either. The most common definition of species is "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding." Furthermore, people will say that the offspring of the interbreeding pair must have the possibility of being fertile; this is what separates donkeys and horses as different species since, despite being able to interbreed, a mule cannot be fertile. A coyote and wolf, however, are able to interbreed and create fertile offspring, which would push the two into one species given the working definition. And yet, the two are still put as two different species within the same genus