Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

In my island province here in Canada the biggest animal was the red fox (vulpes vulpes) until about ten years ago. Then suddenly coyotes appeared seemingly overnight. It drove foxes into the towns and cities or killed them off in rural areas.

It's amazing to witness such a sudden change although I've read they arrived in 1983. It's very densely populated here but also rural it's many small towns spread out plus two bigger cities. Coyotes were easily spotted since they stood out compared to a fox or even a dog.

It's not really a true coyote it's canis latrans or the "eastern coyote", or "coywolf". They're bigger than a true coyote, they're smarter, and they live in packs of a dozen.

The Coywolf is also more dangerous than a coyote or wolf. There are reports from people who were out walking and upon seeing a large dog they turned back around. When walking back they discovered they were being herded into a trap of several Coywolves. One woman in Cape Breton was killed by Coywolves when she was out for a walk in a wooded area.

> One woman in Cape Breton was killed by Coywolves when she was out for a walk in a wooded area

Yes, this did occur and it was a tragedy. But worth keeping things in perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack

Three fatal attacks recorded in the last 100 years. And so few non-fatal attacks that the wikipedia page can list nearly all of them. Even the attack you mention, Taylor Mitchell, it sounds as though this was one particular pair of animals that were far more aggressive than typical.

Coyotes are generally big cowards. They're successful in the anthropocene because they stay out of sight and mind.

Coywolves are more dangerous, perhaps, but we should keep things in perspective about how dangerous we're talking about. If they were ten times more deadly than coyotes, they'd still be a orders of magnitude less dangerous than sharks, bees, and lightning. (All of which are unfathomably less dangerous than drunk drivers).

> we should keep things in perspective about how dangerous we're talking about. If they were ten times more deadly than coyotes, they'd still be a orders of magnitude less dangerous than sharks, bees, and lightning.

Sharks are an illustrative example. They're pretty dangerous if you encounter them. But doing that is fully optional; no one's ever run into a shark by accident. If you live near wolves, you can run into them even though you didn't want to.

Realistically, your risk from sharks is exactly zero unless you're going out of your way to inflate it. It's not honest to claim that sharks are more dangerous than coywolves -- and once you've realized that, you realize that you need to adjust risk estimates based on what you're exposed to.

> no one's ever run into a shark by accident.

What do you mean by that? I'm pretty sure that the swimmers/surfers that have been bitten by a shark were not actually looking for a shark. Swimming at the surface of the water unaware of exactly what's lurking in the water below them is the same thing to me as a hiker walking through the woods suddenly coming upon any wild animal.

Not sure it's a point worth making personally, but I suspect they mean that you encounter bees by leaving the house, something almost everybody does daily. Deer if you drive outside a city. But you will only encounter a shark if you specifically enter the ocean and almost only if you go deeper than a foot or so of water.

I live in Australia where almost everyone lives near the coast, and we regularly swim at beaches where sharks are sighted. Shark-spotting planes, helicopters and drones are a daily thing through summer.

> only if you go deeper than a foot or so of water

So, basically what any adult does when they go on the sea?

Though it seems sharks are especially attracted to surfboards , making the surfers a notable target.

> they'd still be a orders of magnitude less dangerous than sharks, bees, and lightning.

And well, dogs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t...

BTW, since we just adopted a very sweet chocolate lab mix who according to wisdom panel has 25% American Staffordshire Terrier in him, I'll also share this article pointing out that breed is a poor predictor of bite risk:

https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/literature-reviews/dog-...

Gratuitous pic of our new family member:

https://ibb.co/thq4sRG

Did you read the list of fatal dog attacks? I toolk a cursory look came to exactly the opposite conclusion as the second avma.org link did, which seemed to be engaged in mental gymnastics.

The deer is a remarkably deadly animal. More people lose their lives in deer-involved car crashes than through dog attacks. Coyotes are the only thing that kill deer in the semi-urban Eastern US.

I would attribute that more to cars than deer. If oppossums and groundhogs were deer-sized and agile enough to dart in front of vehicles, would we track groundhog-related fatalities?

I think your zoology is a bit off and the type of coyotes you refer to, and the behaviors you describe are pretty much standard issue for any coyote pack.

C. latrans is the species of coyote - there are subspecies beyond this, but the Coywolf is not one of them.

Coywolf simply refers to the phenotype observed when coyotes and wolves interbreed - this can happen anywhere between all of the wolve and coyote subspecies. Coywolves are almost “one offs” (breeding pair hooked up by chance). Many wolves also have coyote DNA.

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

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

> Many wolves also have coyote DNA.

Indeed... in some cases enough that it complicates conservation efforts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA-QINoEEwQ

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