Coyotes Conquered North America. Now They’re Heading South | Hacker News Reader

Coyotes Conquered North America. Now They’re Heading South

nytimes.com

63 pointsdnetesn41 comments

Coyotes come through and rip up our plastic irrigation feed lines every year (Bay Area, Peninsula hills). No mystery, they need water.

I've had "replace plastic with steel lines" on my to-do list since 2014, but haven't had the heart to cut off their water supply. That, and laziness.

They've been around my home far longer than I have, so I guess I'm the invasive species. I'm grateful they've traded access to water for snacking on my dog.

Your outlook on the human prerogative for mastery of his environment is absolutely fascinating to me.

"Don’t believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." loosely related

Consequently, "You don't owe world anything. Tame it to your whim."

I think it's rather: "The world and you both owe each other things."

And suffer the consequences, good or bad. Tame it wisely.

The Dust Bowl was among the many times nature called humanity on its hubris.

Yeah. It wouldn't keep me from defending (a pet, me, my wife, a kid in the neighborhood) from a coyote attack, but I don't have a reason to make their lives more difficult. Fellow mammals, just getting through life, etc.

And it's my (illusory) hope that they'll eat the occasional gopher while they're in my yard. The gophers compete with me for food. The coyotes don't. Yet.

Have you considered making a birdbath type thing close to the ground for them to drink out of?

I've thought about this, but didn't want to make my home more attractive than it is. I have a small dog and my neighbors have several pets who would probably be at the losing end of encounters with coyotes.

Do you know how they discovered that it was water that was inside the pipes?

They may be able to hear it. Coyotes have crazy good hearing. That is based on 0 scientific evidence though, just a guess.

I don't know.

It's possible, as another poster mentioned, that they can hear water flowing through the lines. The surroundings are utterly quiet, and I run the irrigation at night. I can hear turbulence noise in the lines before the water emerges from the local applicators.

On the other hand, coyotes are canids. Their sensory skills are optimized for olfaction. Maybe they can smell the minuscule amount of water vapor that leaks through the push-to-connect couplings. Plus they seem to be pretty smart. It might take only one coyote Einstein to discover "plastic lines here = water" and pass it on to the pack.

One night during the drought, I came upon two coyotes killing a cat right in the middle of old Mountain View.

Cats belong inside. For every cat preyed on by a coyote there's 100 birds preyed on by a cat.

That's nice, someone provided them some food. I hope they didn't get sick from eating the furball.

In a symbiotic relationship who is the host and who is the parasite, your post reminded me of an old story themed "host or parasite" from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5lLxJWew7E&t=13:30

I’m not sure how much land you’re talking about, but an ah professional friend of mine suggested metal fencing since that’s what has been effective for a lot of growers he knows.

If you’re talking about a casual garden, I’ve got nothing for you other than (maybe) metal lines.

Small property with topography that makes it difficult to fence out critters. Metal lines are the answer.

Build a water trough.

As a wise person once said, "You might love nature, but nature doesn't give a fuck about you."

They'd gladly "snack on your dog" or your child, given the opportunity.

Used to love playing with the coyotes in the Rural northeast as a bored teenager. MY brother and I would crouch in the long grass in a 300 acre hilly field and see how close we could get to the coyotes. I don’t think We were sneaking up on them, they just didn’t see us as a threat. Once there were 4 rather than the usual one or two and they started circling us which was both amazing and nerve-wracking. Eventually we stood up and waved our arms and they loped off at a very unconcerned pace.

Some of them just do not see humans as a threat. This one in unincorporated Cupertino walked at me for a quarter of a mile and then walked past me. https://www.flickr.com/photos/swoo/8590438705 There's one in La Honda for at least a few years that does not move when I go past on the road, it just sits in the road and makes people move around it.

They seem to like to come out of the wilderness at night and howl. I didn't realize that they were this brazen, though!

In Chicago I had a particularly fat one saunter right past me, a few feet away, before dashing across a busy four lane street into a cemetery. He was clearly not fazed by me, or traffic, at all.

(It was across Western, for anyone wondering)

There was also this famous incident of a coyote who casually walked into a Quiznos in Lincoln Park and cooled off in the drink cooler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWTttvImgnQ

The "flexible" mating habits of the coyote, leading to the Coywolf, have led some to call them a new species appearing right before our eyes.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are-taki...

The explosion in the coyote population (like deer and elk) is driven by the lack of their natural predator, the wolf.

I am a big fan of both coyotes and wolves but we wouldn't have much of a coyote situation in North America had the populations of wolves not been so drastically reduced.

That's likely what's allowing the coyote the freedom to travel to South America.

A century ago, both coyotes and wolves were kept in check by humans. Humans lived mostly on farms, not in cities. People carried guns. It was normal and expected that a person would shoot a dangerous predator.

As things stand now, we're going to have coyotes and wolves everywhere. They will be in city parks, eating the garbage and pigeons and raccoons. City dwellers don't normally shoot predators; it would be weird and would likely result in an arrest. Small and frail people (children included) won't be safe alone, as they had been for a couple centuries.

>A century ago, both coyotes and wolves were kept in check by humans

Annihilated the population, FTFY.

>As things stand now, we're going to have coyotes and wolves everywhere. They will be in city parks, eating the garbage and pigeons and raccoons. City dwellers don't normally shoot predators; it would be weird and would likely result in an arrest. Small and frail people (children included) won't be safe alone, as they had been for a couple centuries.

Not likely. You forget about Animal Control? And if populations ever were to become a problem you think city dwellers are too helpless and stupid to do anything about it? Like increase the animal control budget...

Your lack of imagination doesn't project onto reality very well I'mm sorry to say.

Unlike the wolf, coyotes have thrived in part because they have adapted excellently to urban environments. (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160418-animals-u...)

City dwellers generally don't (in general) shoot animal pests for pretty obvious reasons: in the close quarters of the city, mistakes may have much greater impact. Coyotes rarely attack people; even unarmed, I'd bet on the 150lb adult human over the 30lb coyote in any 1-on-1 fight, and humans often have other clever tricks up their sleeves (including weapons but also beyond that). Generally speaking coyotes avoid people as much as possible. They are IMHO wise to do so.

The main impact of coyote urbanization on most people IMHO is that it is much less safe to have an "outdoors cat" or any other free-roaming pet. Which is why animal control departments from what I see don't pay much mind to urban coyotes, it is not that big of a problem. As another poster says, if it became a big problem, resources could be directed to control the coyote.

I like the question posed at the end of the article: should humans interpret this as a natural expansion or an invasive species. It's hard to tell, that's for sure.

Big question that’s applicable to lots of things. Not convinced humans are that good at answering it.

>should humans interpret this as a natural expansion or an invasive species.

well, for starters, how would humans interpret themselves?

>They thrived, in part, because of increasing forest fragmentation and agricultural lands along with the annihilation of predators like wolves, cougars and jaguars.

sounds like an invasive species [of humans] cleared path for natural expansion of coyotes.

Please, let's not start another immigration debate here.

Labster, what's going on, big guy?

Wait, they're crossing the Darien gap? o_O

I live in a metropolitan area that has creeks feeding a river that flows through the city. I see coyotes regularly. Its an interesting thing seeing wild life in urban areas.

Indeed. In one of my podcasts a biologist described studying a female coyote that lived in downtown Chicago traveling between several parks in the wee hours. IIRC he tracked her for a couple years until the tracking collar fell off. For several years after that some folks who knew he was watching them sent him surveillance video of her passing by. She even raised a litter one year.

We're in the far western 'burbs (DuPage county) and regularly see them on our morning runs. One morning a large one crossed the street about 50' in front of us just as we turned from our drive into the street. It never looked our way but had to know we were there.

Some of my favorite people are coyotes. They get a little rowdy, but they're good conversationalists otherwise.

According to the Road Runner cartoon shorts on Looney Tunes, at least one coyote has taken over the southwest American desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Ru...

And even before "Looney Tunes", coyotes (including wily ones) were part of the folklore of many Native American cultures in the Southwest US and Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(mythology)#By_culture

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