coyotes may have occurred among individual gray wolves from historical remnants before the population was completely extirpated in Texas. The resulting hybrids would later on melt back into the coyote populations as the wolves disappeared. The same study discussed an alternative possibility that the red wolves, which also once overlapped with both species in central Texas, were involved in circuiting the gene flows between the coyotes and gray wolves, much like how the eastern wolf is suspected to have bridged gene flows between gray wolves and coyotes in the Great Lakes region, since direct hybridizations between coyotes and gray wolves is considered rare. In tests performed on a stuffed carcass of what was initially labelled a chupacabra, mitochondrial DNA analysis conducted by Texas State University showed that it was a coyote, though subsequent tests revealed that it was a coyote × gray wolf hybrid sired by a male Mexican wolf. Northwestern wolf × coyote hybrid experiment In 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services conducted a captive-breeding experiment at their National Wildlife Research Center Predator Research Facility in Logan, Utah. Using gray wolves from British Columbia and western coyotes, they produced six hybrids, making this the first hybridization case between pure coyotes and northwestern wolves. The experiment, which used artificial insemination, was intended to determine whether or not the sperm of the larger gray wolves in the west was capable of fertilizing the egg cells of western coyotes. Aside from the historical hybridizations between coyotes and the smaller Mexican wolves in the south, as well as with eastern wolves and red wolves, gray wolves from the northwestern US and western provinces of Canada were not known to interbreed with coyotes in the wild, thus prompting the experiment. The six resulting hybrids included four males and two females. At six months of age, the hybrids were closely monitored and were shown to display both physical and behavioral characteristics from both species, as well as some physical similarities to the eastern wolves, whose status as a distinct wolf species or as a genetically distinct subspecies of the gray wolf is controversial. Regardless, the result of this experiment concluded that northwestern wolves, much like the eastern wolves, red wolves, Mexican wolves, and domestic dogs, are capable of hybridizing with coyotes. In 2015, a research team from the cell and microbiology department of Anoka-Ramsey Community College revealed that an F2 litter of two