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Featherologist — The Piebald? Coyote
Published: 2012-12-29 18:23:09 +0000 UTC; Views: 1459; Favourites: 18; Downloads: 20
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Picture request for ~PersianButterflyI am so in love with this animal.... he/she was a odd coloured coyote that just doesn't make sense. Piebald is a form of leucism, yet if this animal was semi-leucistic then wouldn't any colouring (pigment) present be ginger and not brown and grey? Ginger being the base colour of leucism.
Anyone good with their genetics?
This is definitely coyote - I've felt pure coyotes, coydogs and dogs, the fur definitely has all the texture of a proper yote. I don't think it's a hybrid, then again I'm not an expert.
Also... Curses to the person who'd go and kill this gorgeous animal, then do it shame by cutting it up. Why do the rare ones always get wasted?
Unfortunately I purchased this animal as part of a trade, so he/she is not for keeps.
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Comments: 21
dang so its claimed already? hell i was all like SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
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shame! Whered you find this bueaty anyway?
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A friend reserved it from LunaLura on Etsy, then said if I purchased it I could use it in part of a trade for a gorgeous blonde coyote of hers. 
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Wouldnt surprised if it did come from her originally, she gets a ton of yotes.
I should pay her off to hold one if she ever finds another! hahaha
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It originally came from Minotaur-Queen, perhaps you could send a few questions her way as she may know something extra about it? All I know is that it was labelled as a piebald coyote.
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Thanks very much!
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Coydog, probably. That's irish spotting. Just a genetic mutation that creates collie-like markings. The flecks on it's muzzle is ticking. Also happens with irish spotting.
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Thanks for the info!
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Omg! Cant wait to get it. It is gorgeous. Thanks for the pic
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Piebald actually isn't a form of luecism, in domestic dogs white-spotting is it's own separate gene and can range anywhere from Solid (dominant) to piebalds and extreme piebalds (recessive). You can think of it as solid colors being a capital S and piebalding/white markings being a lowercase s, if you've ever used Punnet squares. If this guy had parents who happened to carry piebalding (most likely from breeding with dogs somewhere in their ancestry) then there's a small chance one of their puppies would carry both piebald genes, letting this guy happen. It's quite rare in wild species, you're very lucky to be able to have a specimen like this! Though I agree, awful shame that they had to cut him up...
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Thank you so much for the info!
Out of curiousity, do you know anything about the melanistic gene?
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Not too much in coyotes... I do know that in wolves, the black-phase coloration they can sometimes have is actually a trait that originally was bred in from domestic dogs, and is a dominant trait. In dogs, one of their locus sets (pairs of alleles that determine color) is represented by the letter K. A capital K means black, so if a dog is KK, or Kk, the black will mask all other color - a black labrador, for instance, is a yellow lab with a K gene, so it appears black. If a dog has two lowercase, recessive Ks, kk, it will let patterns like agouti, sable, and etc show through. So the vast majority of wild wolves are kk, which is why they appear sable/agouti in coloration. But because somewhere in their lineage a dog passed on the K gene, and K is dominant, that's how you get these strains of black-colored wolves.
Now I don't know too much about coyote-specific genetics but I have to assume that it's the same story with them, as coyotes will interbreed with dogs (or, it's even possible that a coyote could have interbred with a black wolf and gotten that gene from there).
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I don't think piebald is a form of leucism, considering you'd need that pigment loss for leucism. If that was the case, wouldn't piebald dogs always have the liver and such noses as well? That doesn't occur, leading me to believe piebald is something different
The most common way for a coyote to get this extreme white on it is to be part dog and mutts come in all shapes in sizes, so it wouldn't be strange to get them looking/feeling like regular coyotes. Most coydogs look mostly coyote in the first place XD
Gorgeous face, though!
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But isn't that was piebald is, loss of pigment only in certain areas? 
It's so hard to find info on the subject, anything I've gathered has been from the pro taxidermists over on taxi.net.
Coydog def seems a proper possibility though, thanks for the info!
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I don't think so considering white is like a "top layer" gene. White is OVER black in, for example, a border collie. It's not that black is "lost" in the areas where the dog appears white.
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