![]() ![]() Historically confined to the deserts and prairies of Mexico and the central United States, coyotes today inhabit nearly every part of the continent, from tundra, grasslands and forests to city parks and suburban backyards. One resident told The New York Times she had not seen so much commotion since a man was caught running naked through the park.Ĭity coyotes such as these are frequently in the public spotlight, but it’s not just urban areas that have been colonized in recent decades by this uniquely North American predator. The latter set off a three-hour police chase that shut down the city’s Riverside Park. That spring alone, coyotes were reported in the Bronx, suburban New Jersey and a tony neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It was hardly the first such sighting in the local news. IN APRIL 2015, A COYOTE MADE HEADLINES when it was spotted on the rooftop of a bar in Queens. In Illinois, another Canis latrans (right) devours a vole it caught beneath the snow. This study shows that large carnivores can - and will - shape how smaller meat-eaters live and die near people.Once restricted to the continent’s midsection, this adaptable predator now roams from coast to coastĪ coyote crosses a street at dawn in San Francisco (above), one of many cities where the predator thrives. “As wolves recover outside of national parks, there was this major question about whether they could recover enough to actually fulfill their ecological role” of controlling the numbers of smaller carnivores, he says. The study shows that large carnivores shape the behavior of smaller predators even outside wilderness areas, something not all scientist agreed would be the case, Levi says. But the smell and sound of wolves - which evolved alongside coyotes for millennia - are hard to forget if you’ve been attacked. A coyote is unlikely to make the connection that a person is behind a gun. ![]() This may be because animals aren’t good at reading danger signs from people in a modern world, Prugh says. Humans were responsible for 14 coyote deaths during the study period. Researchers used radio collars to track coyotes like this one and found that the animals were more likely to hang around people when larger predators were about. Wolves and cougars killed just eight, meaning people killed three times as many coyotes and bobcats than the large predators. But the animals traded one threat for another: People shot, trapped or otherwise killed 25 bobcats and coyotes during the study period. ![]() Tracking these animals revealed that coyotes and bobcats, the mid-sized predators, were twice as likely to spend time near ranches, roads, fields and towns when large carnivores were around. These collars tracked the location of the animals every four hours for up to two years - “one of the most impressive datasets” on predator movement outside of a wilderness area to date, Levi says. To see how smaller predators behave near human territory, Prugh and her colleagues attached radio collars to 37 bobcats and 35 coyotes, as well as to 22 wolves and 60 cougars, in two rural areas of Washington State. In experiments where scientists played recordings of either growling or human voices, smaller meat-eaters like coyotes were more likely to “avoid areas where you play recordings of Rush Limbaugh or people talking in general,” he says. “Animals are really, really scared of humans,” explains Taal Levi, a wildlife ecologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, who was not involved in the study. But other research indicates that mid-sized predators keep away from people when given the chance. Some animals will hide from danger in spaces shaped by people - be it farms or suburbs - in a phenomenon called the human shield effect. Yet how this works outside of wilderness areas is unclear. Understandably, smaller predators will try to stay clear of their murderous kin. “The wolves had buried heads in the snow,” recalls Prugh. During a field season in Alaska, the wildlife ecologist came across the remains of coyotes massacred by wolves. What the aftermath of this violence looks like is something that Prugh has witnessed firsthand. Then, as large predators were reintroduced into the wild - including wolves in Yellowstone National Park - scientists started to notice deadly (and mostly-one sided) violence erupting between old and new meat-eating residents ( SN: 7/21/20). When large carnivore populations plummeted from being hunted in vast stretches of North America, predators less threatening to humans flourished. The study is among the first to show that large cats and wolves shape the behavior of other predators outside of wilderness areas, says Laura Prugh, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. ![]()
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