WHO IS THE URBAN COYOTE? William O. Wirtz, II, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor of Biology, Pomona College, Claremont, CA Note: This was written for the DLPOA and was e-mailed to the Hoofbeats editor. I first wrote an article like this over 30 years ago after rapid growth in Southern California in the 1960's and 70's led to frequent conflicts with coyotes. The issues raised way back then were very similar to those I still hear today. And I conducted studies of urban coyotes in Los Angeles Co. and Angeles National Forest in the 1970's and 80's, including food habits of both urban and national forest animals and radio tracking of coyotes in urban areas. I want to teach you something about coyotes (and predators in general) and how they fit into natural ecological schemes. And I want to tell you something about coyotes in Southern California and what we have learned about their role in both natural ecosystems and urban areas. Originally coyotes lived in the central and western parts of the continent. They were common on the prairies, where they followed the bison herds, not taking any of these giants on their own, but scavenging from wolf kills. If the remains of large animals were unavailable they took small animals - rodents, rabbits, birds, reptiles, and insects, as well as fruit. They're omnivorous, meaning they'll eat anything, and they're also "opportunistic feeders", meaning they'll take what's easiest and closest. Coyotes are extremely smart and clever; Native Americans often portrayed them as the "trickster" in their legends. European immigrants have had a love/hate relationship with predators on the North American continent since they arrived, and especially as they moved West. They landed on our shores with a strong tradition against wolves -- an attitude they'd developed in Europe where wolves were known to kill livestock and also believed to hunt down and kill humans. For people whose livelihood depended on the success of their farms, anything that created a difficulty was, of course, considered bad, be it fires, floods, or predators. Fires could be fought, floods could ultimately be contained by dams and levees, and predators could be destroyed. These people saw absolutely nothing redeeming about animals that killed their stock. Large predators, especially cats, bears, and wolves, were rapidly eliminated; smaller predators, though no effort was spared, were much more difficult to eradicate. Initially there were no coyotes in the eastern states, in fact, they were rarely seen east of the Mississippi River. By the time European settlers finally moved out onto the prairies the bison herds, once numbering in the millions, had been decimated by market hunters and "sportsmen". After the railroad was completed across the plains, trainloads of people were taken out to shoot bison just for the joy of it. First the herds were killed for their meat, then for their
hides, and finally their bleached bones were gathered and shipped East. Additionally, bison were intentionally killed to deprive the Indians of their livelihood and thus force them onto the reservations and into farming. But whatever the reason for the demise of the great herds, the result was a "food vacuum" for the predators. With the arriving farmers came their livestock. In the minds of predators, these were simply replacements for the great herds, so the predators turned to them as easy targets for supper. With the mantra that "the only good predator was a dead predator", wolves, mountain lions, and bears were hunted down with comparative ease, but coyotes proved to be very elusive. Coyotes are extremely adaptable, can live almost anywhere, and eat almost anything. During the 16th Century coyotes extended their range into Central America with Spanish livestock, and in the 19th Century they moved into British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and Alaska, also by following the white man's livestock. By the 20th Century coyotes were present in all 49 continental states. Additionally, they interbred with timber wolves in New England and red wolves in the Southeast as wolves were extirpated from these regions, producing some exceptionally large "coyotes" in those areas. Today, in the absence of large predators whose kills they could scavenge, coyotes have adapted mostly to a diet of small prey, insects, fruit, and in urban areas, garbage. COYOTE BIOLOGY Coyote litter size is usually 5-7; smaller if conditions are poor, and larger if conditions are good, or if coyotes are persecuted. In south Texas, where coyotes were abundant, females averaged 4.3 pups per litter, but where coyotes were killed in control efforts females averaged 6.9 pups per litter, and females bred earlier in the year. The pups are born in a den, and this is the only time a den is used. Older animals hide or sleep under brush or other shelter. The male coyote helps raise the pups. The pups' eyes open in the second week, and coyote pupils are round. Vertical pupils are found in nocturnal animals, so the coyote's round pupils tell biologists that it has adapted to see best in daylight. Believing in the misconception that they are nocturnal, people are often astonished to see coyotes in the daytime. We had a pet coyote for 13 years - she slept soundly in the house all night and was active all day outside. Jackals, the African equivalent of coyotes, are still very much day active, no doubt because they have never been pursued like coyotes. Humans have probably forced coyotes into more night-time activity in our country, just like the intensive trapping in the 1800's turned beavers from diurnal to nocturnal. Coyotes are medium-sized dogs; in southern California those I weighed averaged 22-25 pounds, and the largest was 34 pounds. Students in my ecology class regularly overestimated the weight of road-killed animals brought into my lab, so I'm not surprised when TV reporters interview people who grossly over-guess the size and weight of coyotes they've seen in their neighborhoods. Coyotes may remain mated for years, and the pair protects their territory against all other coyotes, adult or young. This limits the number of coyotes in an area. The condition, and, or, abundance of resources, of a territory greatly influences the number of
pups a pair will produce. The male helps raise the young; male dogs do not help raise young. Young coyotes normally leave the territory of their parents before the next breeding season, and they then must find available and suitable habitat, as well as mates, in order to survive and breed. If suitable territories are already claimed by other coyotes, they must displace the occupant(s) of one, or spend days wandering in search of one. If they aren't successful, they will continue to roam and search, being run out by resident coyotes time after time, taking food where available, and generally having an extremely difficult and probably short life. When nuisance wild animals, coyotes or any others, are live-trapped and removed to a wild area for release, they, too, will have to find suitable, unoccupied, habitat to survive. So a trap/remove/release back into the wild program often dooms the animal. Additionally, most urban wild animals, accustomed to garbage, pet food, fruit trees and vegetable gardens, have absolutely no idea how to survive in "the wild". RESOURCES Ecologists understand that animal populations are regulated largely by resources; if resources are available, species will evolve to utilize them. We also understand that species interact with each other in extremely complex ways. Many of these interactions humans do not yet understand. We have also learned that, as habitats are altered, ecological conditions and interactions are also altered, and today we know that many species have responded to human activities, including coyotes. It is very important for humans to realize that, if suitable resources are available in a territory, removing a coyote simply makes room for another to move in; but adult breeding pairs, who are extremely territorial and defend their "property", limit the total number to what the resources can support. They will keep out new coyotes and, if the resources in their territory are marginal, they will also chase out their young when they mature. So, it is very important to remember that coyotes, like all species, are limited by resource availability -- no resources means no coyotes. NUMBERS The densities of larger, mobile animals like coyotes are very difficult to determine, even though the public always wants to know, and the figures I find quoted in papers are usually just guesses. The densities of wild coyotes are really quite low. I estimated coyotes in the chaparral of Southern California at 2-3/sq. mi.; Kansas had the highest known density of 5/sq. mi. in 1950's; and Kansas was also one of the few states then that did not kill coyotes to protect livestock. Densities of coyotes are often overestimated because coyote vocalizations can be very deceiving. One animal makes many different sounds in close succession, so a few may sound like a half dozen. And the function of vocalizations is social - not hunting!! Would you run around yelling if you were trying to catch a live animal to eat? Lots of howling is mom, dad, and the kids socializing with each other and the neighbors; hunting is silent.
DIET Coyotes are described as "opportunistic feeders", anything is food. A great diversity of foods is taken in different parts of California. Much of the diet is small animals, insects, fruit, even carrion, while livestock killing is often overestimated. Unless poison-baited carcasses have turned coyotes away from eating carrion, they'll feed on anything dead, whether it was killed by disease, weather, starvation, wounds, hunters, or cars. So merely seeing a coyote at a dead steer or sheep doesn't automatically mean a coyote killed it. Field studies in Utah on livestock loss demonstrated that many kills attributed to predators had actually died of natural causes; then when predators came to eat the carrion they left footprints and thus were blamed. Interestingly, it is easy to identify the specific predator by the nature of the kill. Mountain lions break the neck, as they are large enough. Coyotes grab the throat close to the windpipe and strangle the prey. There is little surface damage, but under the skin you can see puncture wounds and hemorrhaging. Dogs are very messy, biting and tearing all over the body as they chase and harass the victim. In the 1980's the Los Angeles Co. Sheriff investigated a case of cat killing and dismembering, which some thought was from the practice of witchcraft. I had a chance to examine several of these dead cats, and all of them showed unmistakable signs of being killed by coyotes, i.e. the presence of puncture wounds and hemorrhaging in the neck region. The cats had been previously described as having been surgically dissected by a sharp knife. This reported "surgical dissection" of cat bodies by a sharp knife could be duplicated by me ripping the skin with my bare hands. Not killed by sadistic humans at all, it was simply coyotes, who had torn open the skin and eaten the best parts, leaving the remains on the front lawn. Humans have always protected their livestock. Humans kill coyotes to protect sheep. But coyotes eat rabbits, and, in fact, ate 96% of the jack rabbits born each year in a Utah study. Astoundingly, six jack rabbits eat as much as one sheep. So killing coyotes to protect sheep means lots more jack rabbits, who eat lots of forage. Consequently more sheep starve, and problem hasn't been solved at all. Southern California studies of food habits show that wild coyotes take wood rats, mice, some deer, insects and fruit. Rapid urbanization of Southern California, beginning in 1960's, provided new food sources for coyotes. Garbage was a major source in some cities, from both unsecured trash cans placed in alleys, and from open dumps. Coyotes were reported in alleys in the daytime, stomachs from road kills and control activities contained high amounts of human discards, and droppings collected in cities contained evidence of human foods consumed. But coyotes also took domestic fruit, food left outside for pets, even food placed outside on purpose for coyotes, and, yes, the pets themselves. Importantly, food habits of truly wild coyotes in Angeles National Forest, determined solely from droppings, showed that these animals didn't use our resources. In the 1970's Claremont already had 90 gallon cans on wheels like the ones so common today; so coyotes, or dogs, couldn't get into them. A careful food habits study in Claremont showed virtually no garbage then.
persecuted. Even where control efforts occur, dispersal of survivors quickly fills the habitat if resources are available. Therefore, killing coyotes, other than known problem animals, will not solve the problem. This will only lead to increased survival of pups, dispersal of animals into vacated territories, and, as long as resources are available, may actually increase predation rates on pets. This increased predation can come when new coyotes move into vacated territories, don't yet know where the various food sources are, and take what is easiest, whether it's garbage from behind a fast-food restaurant or the Chihuahua from your back yard. A much less known aspect of coyotes is that they don't all kill cats. Apparently those that do also teach their young to kill them too, thus perpetuating the problem generation after generation. They see cats as food and hunt them. But those that don't see cats as food are a valuable resource in neighborhoods where cats roam free, because not only will the local coyotes not kill them (and won't teach their young to kill them either), to protect their territory they'll chase away interlopers, coyotes who may well have cats on their menu. So removing coyotes that don't eat cats could open the gates for coyote replacements that do. MANAGING COYOTES Ecologists understand that animal populations are best managed by managing resources. If we want to reduce the attraction of urban areas to predators like coyotes, we must consider how garbage is stored and collected, intentional feeding, the availability of pet food, and free-roaming pets. There must be nothing to eat. Even water can be an attraction, although with decorative fishponds and livestock waterers that's not something we can eliminate. But we have control over other things. We can pen almost any animal we want to keep. We had chickens for years at our rural home, and even once watched in fascination as a bobcat tried to dig into our pen, but never lost a chicken. I know people who have built elaborate outdoor pens for prize cats even with a connection to the house. We know a family who built a cat door on the porch roof, so cats could go in and out in coyote country by climbing up a porch pillar to the roof. The cats who didn't learn this scheme didn't last long there, but the ones that did lived for years and died of old age. There are even ways to fence coyotes out, and although expensive, so are the locks on your doors and your home security system. It all depends on how much you value your possessions. A FINAL WORD The coyote is a superbly adapted North American predator. It is the last common one, and it plays an important role in the natural communities of the Southwest. Humans must learn to appreciate the coyote for its natural role, and learn to manage our affairs so that coyotes need not be a problem in our communities. (there are literature references for all the facts stated)