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Comment by michaelbuckbee | Hacker News Reader

Other than eating the occasional housecat (which is bad) Coyotes, in general, seem like good partners for our current urban/suburban life. They make hidden dens in our parks, like to eat rats and other small rodents and are scared of dogs and households.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2010/12/08/131876027/6...

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Well, they can't eat a cat if the cat is kept indoors, which it should be to protect wild animals that it might kill for fun (e.g. birds).

Considering Australia is culling feral cats as a conservation effort, the coyotes might be doing our ecosystem a favor in that regard as well.

There shouldn't be any _outdoor cats_, full stop. I don't think people realize the extent of the bird/squirrel/lizard/frog carnage inflicted by the fluffy apex predator they occasionally get to pet. While I've seen many a cat catch & eat small creatures, I once had a neighbor's cat use my bird feeder as the lure for an all-you-can-eat bird buffet.

Yes they eat/kill lots of wildlife but so did the Bobcat, Lynx Ocelot and Foxes that we drove out of much of their North American habitat.

They take small to mid size dogs too. Usually when it’s dark. Sometimes even while on a leash. Our 13 pound dog got attacked in our backyard. The coyote jumped a five foot fence with ease. The dog survived with some bite marks but the vet said usually the injuries are worse.

Otherwise they cause less trouble than raccoons who get into a lot of things.

you may consider this: https://www.coyotevest.com/collections/all

Not sure about this. Doesn't seem very comfortable for the dog. I added another layer of chickenwire to the fence that went outward so the coyote would not only have to jump up but then also to get over an overhang.No problems since then and cost maybe $50 and a few hours of work.

I live across the street from a big park where coyotes live. I see them walk around as early as 2-3pm sometimes - and a few times I saw them right outside my door late at night. My biggest worry is them jumping into my balcony and getting in through the doggy door, which they are known to do. My dog has no chance against them.

i'm glad to hear it's working out

Once coyotes establish themselves, you can never get rid of them. If you try to exterminate them, they just start having larger litters until their population recovers. They are adaptable and cunning. I hope that South America’s animals are ready for them, because they can permanently change an ecosystem.

Big Felines and wolves erradicate it. Is just that we, humans are not good at that.

Big felines and wolves don't do well in urban/suburban environments. Coyotes do.

The irony: we kill large scary predators, but inevitably medium sized predators replace them. People and cattle are not terrorized but our Shih Tzus and kitty cats are.

Yep, It even has a name in Ecology: Mesopredator release. You can have one wolf or "twenty" coyotes in the same area.

Yep. Coyote population is purely tied to resource availability, which unfortunately can include domesticated animals.

Any farmer will tell you that security is more important than hunting for coyotes.

> Other than eating the occasional housecat (which is bad)

If you want your cat to participate in nature, to have the opportunity to kill wild animals, you have to accept the possibility that other wild animals might try to eat your cat. Wanting the former but not the latter, wanting to have your cake and eating it too, is unreasonable.

Suppose I'd like my son to be able to go out hunting, but I want to make sure the animals out there do not eat him.

Why is that different?

If your kid wants to frolicking around in the woods in bear country, it would be reasonable for you to tell him to watch his back. Or go with him and watch his back yourself. Or if neither could be managed, you should tell him to stay inside. What's not reasonable is calling for the extermination of bears to turn nature into a sanitized Disneyland experience safe for unattended young children.

Mapping this analogy back to cats, you should either tell your cat to watch his back, watch your cat's back yourself, or keep your cat indoors. Really though, just do the last one. If your son hunted the north american songbirds your cat kills, he'd be a felon. If you want your cat to be happy, buy some cat toys.

This may be anecdotal, but it's said that coyotes drive foxes out, and foxes are better at keeping a neighborhood clear of varmints. The years when there are foxes in our 'hood, the rabbits are much less bothersome. I only hope coyotes can do as good a job. Last year was terrible.

If you have a plague of rabbits you need a lynx to eat rabbits and keep foxes out of the area :-) nothing new under the sun.

Can you post some lynx? ;-)

Sorry, endangered. We need all of them :-)

They eat chickens that people keep, kill other pets, they're basically a nuisance species in North America. Here's it's perfectly legal to shoot them year-round. And, you can cull up to 50% of the population before you would have any effect on them.

Yeah, where my dad lives in rural kentucky, they actually paid you for each coyote you killed. Not sure if that's still the case, though.

They have begun interbreeding with wolves and dogs, sometimes creating larger and smarter breeds of canids than coyotes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf

I was in Chile recently, and one thing you notice is how many street dogs there are in towns/cities. They don't seem to be owned by anyone, but are fed/watered by various people/businesses and seem somewhere between domesticated and wild split into various packs.[1]

Curious how coyote and street dog packs will interact. I've heard Mexico also has a lot of street dogs, so maybe there are already first-hand accounts of what happens when a pack of coyotes moves into street dogs territory?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_dog

They will probably interbreed.

The problem is when new predators, especially widely adaptable ones such as coyotes, are introduced into an ecosystem where the prey animals have no defenses against them, they tend to outcompete everything so the populations of prey animals decline and local predators end up with less food causing both populations to decline until only the invasive one is left.

This is why introduced and invasive species of both plants and animals are a huge problem around the world. They stifle local biodiversity and you end up with monocultures.

Out here (Southern California) they definitely eat cats and small dogs.

Yep. Every time I see a lost cat poster, I wonder what the owner's thinking. There was even a lost dog poster in my neighborhood stating outright that the dog got snatched by a coyote.

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