Lately, it feels like coyotes are causing trouble everywhere in Southern California. There’s the report about the dog in Van Nuys that was attacked by three coyotes, after they jumped the 7-foot fence into the dog’s backyard in May. Another story from June about a pack of coyotes in Mar Vista stalking people as they walked their pets. And in Redondo Beach, officials issued coyote warnings to residents earlier this month.
Experts say it can be common to see more of them around this time of year. One reason is because coyote pupping season extends into the summer.
In contrast to beloved predators like P-22, Griffith Park’s late famous mountain lion, people in L.A. have a much more complicated relationship with coyotes. They occasionally eat our pets. They can stalk us as we walk our dogs. They rarely even attack children. At heated public meetings around the region, terrified residents call for coyotes to be killed, trapped, or banished from our neighborhoods. I wanted to know: how did we come to villainize coyotes? And what do scientists really know about their behavior?
So here are six things you need to know about coyotes, including how they got to the region and what has contributed to our attitudes toward them over time.
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They are historically misunderstood, so many people tend to fear them
Coyotes are native to southwestern North America. They’ve been in this region for more than five million years.
Many Native Americans consider the coyote a sacred animal because their ancestors have interacted with them regularly for at least 20,000 of those years.
“It was an animal that was the living breathing version of Coyote, with a capital C, a deity that every Western tribe had hundreds of stories about. A deity that basically taught you how to function in the world as a proper human being,” said Dan Flores, an environmental historian and author of the book Coyote America.
But European settlers saw coyotes very differently. Initially, they weren’t sure what to make of them, because coyotes don’t exist in Europe. They soon lumped them in with wolves, which settlers considered their enemies because they preyed on sheep and cattle. But coyotes behaved very differently than wolves, in ways Europeans found bizarre. Coyotes would come into villages and settlements in the Americas to feed on the mice and rats that, in turn, fed on human garbage. They lived among people.
Coyotes are incredibly resilient creatures
They can survive alone, in pairs, or in larger groups. They developed this rare adaptation as a way to protect themselves against gray wolves, which were constantly harassing them. So it was advantageous, as a species, to be able to break up their pack, disperse, and then come back together when things were safer.
Coyotes are nearly impossible to eradicate
After driving grizzly bears and wolves nearly to extinction as part of the war on predators, the federal government turned its attention to coyotes, but its efforts completely backfired.
As Flores points out, “a famous study done in the early 1950s indicated that you could wipe out 70% of the coyote population year after year after year, and you didn't reduce it. It nonetheless would recover every single year because the coyotes would respond by having larger litters, getting more of their pups to adulthood.”
Coyotes began to move into and thrive in cities toward the end of the 20th century
There are many theories about why this happened. One of them is that around this time, American cities finally got a handle on the huge populations of stray dogs roaming their streets. And once the stray dog population was gone, coyotes began to occupy that niche.
Another theory is that the market for coyote pelts — really furs of all kinds — collapsed in the 1990s, as wearing fur became cruel, not cool. Plus, as our attitudes towards predators began to change, bounties and coyote killing contests became unpalatable in lots of places.
So with way fewer coyotes being killed, the rural population began to rise. Young coyotes began looking for less crowded places to live, like cities. Soon, they were showing up in sandwich shops in Chicago, mattress stores in Kansas City, and backyards in Los Angeles. Many people fed them, which caused coyotes to lose their fear of people and associate people with food.
Urban coyotes are bolder than rural ones
Professor Stan Gehrt has researched coyotes in Chicago for 25 years. He did a study where he put out what he calls “novel objects” — things coyotes had never seen before – and watched how they interacted with them.
When he put out a yard gnome and recorded the interaction, he saw that urban coyotes were comfortable approaching, sniffing or biting the gnomes. On the other hand, the rural ones didn’t approach them at all. Other research has found urban coyotes know how to cross freeways and dodge cars.
Coyotes attack people, but it’s rare
The only documented fatal coyote attack on a person in the United States happened in Glendale in 1981. A coyote attacked and killed a 3-year-old girl named Kelly Keen outside her house, in a neighborhood where people regularly fed coyotes.
Her death, and dozens of other attacks, led some researchers to dub Southern California the coyote attack capital of the country, and it still comes up today as an example of what happens when coyotes are not properly dealt with.
So how do communities around Southern California solve their coyote “problems”? Find out on Imperfect Paradise: Lions, Coyotes, & Bears Part 2 — The Coyote Villain.
CONTENT ADVISORY: This episode includes details about a deadly coyote attack of a toddler.
And check out the first story in our predator series:
More on coyotes
- LA Explained: How To Live Safely With Our Coyote Neighbors
- Coyotes Seem More Aggressive? That’s Because They’re Feeding Their Pups. Here’s What You Need To Know
