
Coyotes Conquered North America. Now They’re Heading South - dnetesn
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/science/coyotes-americas-spread.html
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ridgeguy
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.

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

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ridgeguy
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.

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iamthepieman
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.

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stevenwoo
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](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.

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nkrisc
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWTttvImgnQ)

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JoeDaDude
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...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are-taking-over-
eastern-north-america-180957141/)

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wavefunction
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.

~~~
burfog
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.

~~~
Brockenstein
>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.

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loufe
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.

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trhway
>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.

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

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R_haterade
Labster, what's going on, big guy?

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Piskvorrr
Wait, they're crossing the Darien gap? o_O

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bfuller
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.

~~~
HankB99
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.

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

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jonathanoliver
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Runner)

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

