Silly click-bait title, but I did enjoy the contents of this AtlanticCities article:
In the 12 years that Stan Gehrt has been tracking a population of coyotes on the Northwest side of Chicago, living not far from O’Hare International Airport, he has watched them adapt to the city in some pretty stunning ways. For one thing, they understand traffic patterns – in fact, better than some people do.
As best as Gehrt and other researchers can tell, these coyotes have learned what cars are and can understand which direction traffic flows. Coyotes crossing a one-way street know that they need to look in only one direction. They’ve even embraced medians. Coyotes crossing large roads in the city are prone to dash across one direction of traffic and sit waiting on the island in the middle for the other lanes to clear.
“We have one animal living in downtown Chicago, and we’ve watched her cross intersections,” says Gehrt, an associate professor of environment and natural resources at Ohio State University. “She’ll sit on the corner and literally wait until the cars are all stopped at the red light. She’ll wait until she’s sure that vehicles aren’t going, and once everyone stops, then she darts across the road. She’s been able to live in that downtown area now for three years without getting hit by a car.”…
Coyotes occupy a kind of carnivore niche, Gehrt says: They’re the biggest predators we have living in our cities so far, but they also sit at the bottom end of a much more imposing range of meat-eaters. “Now coming behind coyotes,” he says, “we have in North America mountain lions, bears, and wolves.”
Try to picture an urban future where truly everyone wants into the city: aging baby boomers, exurbanites, Millennials, wolves….
Of course, Gehrt shoots down that particular fantasy pretty quickly:
… Bears adapt pretty easily to human food out of your trash can. But wolves and mountain lions, Gehrt says, will face one challenge that coyotes haven’t. Their diet requires a lot of straight-up meat, of the kind that may be harder to find in, say, downtown Chicago…
Barring some further extreme disruption, I think we can accept the fact that coyotes have carved themselves a niche in quite a few American cities, just like racoons (or foxes in British cities). We have established coyote populations here in the Boston area, which is about as far from the “traditional” coyote habitat/range as you can get in North America.
Part of it is that we’ve given “God’s dog” the chance to expand out of the Southwest by eliminating wolves across so much of the continent. But my personal suspicion is that the recent urbanization of the coyote has a lot to do with the fact that Americans have decided, over just the past couple of decades, that free-roaming dogs — whether ‘owned’ or semi-feral “strays” — are not an acceptable part of modern city life. Human packs have always attracted commensual species (that’s probably how dogs were “tamed” in the first place). Once unneutered dogs were no longer “allowed” to wander where they would and scavenge were they could, it opened up a niche that coyotes could exploit. I doubt bears can actually follow that path, although they’re well on the way to becoming a chronic suburban pest, because they’re too big to hide successfully; one incident where a human is killed, and the pressure to drop hunting/trapping restrictions swings irresistably.
redshirt
Heh. I live on a mountain in the woods, yet wander about with no concern for animal or hunter. I pull out of my road the other day, however, and blam! Giant moose in the road. 14 feet or so at the antlers. A young giant. And then I remembered – oh yeah, woods.
The encounter put some doubt in me.
Corner Stone
Hmmm. Until they don’t.
IOW, children don’t know to look both ways either, until you teach them. Just because I know it’s a one way street doesn’t mean the damn fool driver from out of town understands that as well.
Hypatia's Momma
Oh, no, there’s lots of meat in downtown Chicago. Lots and lots of mobile packets of protein…
MikeJ
American cities too. I used to see them all the time when I lived on the east coast, not so much out here.
AT
@Corner Stone: You spend much time downtown in a busy city? Cars aren’t going the wrong way down one way streets to often. The streets are too full
cathyx
Coyotes are common in the Portland metropolitan area. You need to keep your cat in at night if you want to see it in the morning.
Amanda in the South Bay
I’d think the problem has to do with suburban/exurban expansion.
Hypatia's Momma
@efgoldman:
Well, it was the obvious response.
Bill
We had coyotes all over the place out on Cape Cod. There was a pack that lived in the woods behind our house, and many cats went missing in the neighborhood, thankfully not ours. I used to see them sitting in the middle of our street at night, and we’d hear them howling frequently.
We’re not sure if they took the Bourne Bridge or the Sagamore.
PeakVT
The good thing about global warming is that managing the urban/wilderness interface isn’t our most pressing problem.
No, wait, that didn’t come out right…
Corner Stone
@AT: Yes. Happens all the time. Try going to Dallas one week. They have three streets in a row that are all one way the same way.
Point being, I’m not sure this is an actual sign of intelligence or learning by the coyote.
But it doesn’t really matter, either way.
EnfantTerrible
I regularly see deer in my neighborhood – single-family residential, two miles from downtown Santa Rosa. It’s only a matter of time before the predators follow them – coyotes, even mountain lions.
Hypatia's Momma
@EnfantTerrible:
I see them around here and I live just blocks from downtown Berkeley.
RepubAnon
I doubt we’d see the larger carnivores in the cities – too much competition from other large predators, like investment bankers.
Corner Stone
I see them jogging around Memorial Park all the time. Rrraawr.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Living in SoCal, they’re the natives and I’m the interloper. They are smart beyond belief, can live pretty much anywhere, can eat pretty much anything, and LOVE your pets. They really do.
One night I watched a pair of them working my condo complex. One in front of the condos, one behind, the one behind was making mewing noises, I shit you not. Flushing out the neighborhood cats.
Funny what an advantage being able to work off of human leftovers confers. Here in SD, our crows have displaced seagulls for human garbage consumption. Would love to know how that happened.
magurakurin
@Corner Stone:
sheesh. what a dumb ass comment.
Are you saying the researchers are full of shit? They observe the animals changing their behavior when crossing two-way and one-way streets. That displays some damned high cognitive skills. The very fact that their populations are increasing in urban areas strongly supports the assertion that they are able to adapt to an urban environment that includes vehicles and changing traffic patterns.
Your claim that coyotes aren’t really all that because they don’t check for the exceedingly rare case of a driver going the wrong way on a one way street, isn’t very persuasive.
General Stuck
Republicans would never allow that. They are very protective of their status as top predators in any given habitat. They might allow an alley cat or two, but that is about it.
I live in the middle of Mexican Gray Wolf reintro country, and the nutters have made wolves public enemy numero uno, next to tree hugging liberals they call “enviruses” They say it’s because of wolves eating their wingnut babies, though there has never been a reported case of wolves eating any human, ever in this country. They fear and hate and avoid us, all for good reason.
To any insightful bystander, it is obvious they are threatened by the prospect of competition at the top of the food chain, as per evolutionary alpha dog competition, they don’t believe in. As well as the expected superior brane power that gawd withheld, because he’s a monumental smartass .
BGinCHI
I saw some foxes down on Division Street last weekend and when I whistled at them Mrs. BG told me to get my head back in the car and stop acting like an asshole.
Bill
@efgoldman: They must have pahked they cah at the rotary, taken the T down to the hahbah.
magurakurin
@Corner Stone:
you’re so full of shit. You just like fighting over senseless shit. Maybe you should try to get a grant to look into the massive problem of drivers going the wrong way on one streets that apparently plagues this Texas city.
Corner Stone
@magurakurin: What a dumbass. Your comment isn’t backed up by this article nor is it any refutation of my very straight forward comment.
Now GFY.
scav
I’ve heard them called yuccies: Young Urban Coyotes.
Prefer them as neighbors, actually.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Corner Stone:
Foxes jog?
Corner Stone
@magurakurin: I’m not fighting about anything you fucking fuck. It’s a little oversimplistic to determine from this brief article exactly what coyotes and other wild predators evaluate and decide in an urban setting.
mellowjohn
@efgoldman: but at the good steak houses, it’s $50 and up. and everything else is a la carte.
dmsilev
Was it Moscow where the stray dogs had worked out how to ride the subway? No word on whether they used monthly passes or just paid single fares.
Corner Stone
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Oh yeah. Totally hot women jogging around Memorial Park in Houston, pretty much every day.
What? That’s what we were talking about, right? The behavior of foxes in an urban setting?
Personally, I wouldn’t mind it much if they formed a pack and jumped me one day. Just sayin’.
dmsilev
@scav:
It’s when they go hipster that the real annoyance starts.
Nina-the-first
No coyotes in NYC yet, but occasionally there are those cases where someone’s apartment is found full of, say, illegally obtained crocodiles, a tiger and a python, and a missing tenant… I suppose there could be a wild coyote in a NYC apartment, one that someone paid an ‘exotic’ price for, although the tenant there may have a longer life in store.
I sure do miss the JP MA occasional coyotes. Well, I miss MA (voting NY this year).
Edit: Hey, yuccies… I know where to find those here in NYC.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev:
I thought all the trouble started when they went Coyote Ugly.
catclub
There was an interesting program on leopards, which showed them also adapting very well to living with people, while lions and tigers have no luck, by comparison.
Jay C
@Nina-the-first:
Maybe not downtown or on the Upper East Side, but coyotes have been sighted in a lot of the Outer Boroughs (Westchester, especially – along with the occasional bear).
No word on whether they come in on the subway…
magurakurin
@Corner Stone:
sure sounds like you want to fight with me.
whatever, boss. Have a nice day.
Corner Stone
@magurakurin: Take off you Hoser!
tisalaska
unless you live in Alaska and uninvited guests are pretty normal stuff..
http://www.adn.com/2012/10/21/2667428/black-bear-trapped-in-ketchikan.html
ms badger
@RepubAnon: If there are deer, there are mountain lions if you live in the West. You just don’t see them, because they are very, very good at not being seen. Foot hills dweller here, speaking from experience.
Bears are a little more obtrusive.
craigie
Interesting choice of topics. This very morning I was walking my dog just off Mulholland and she was very unhappy. I couldn’t work out why, until I turned around and there were two large coyotes tracking us. I shouted them off, but it was very disconcerting. They absolutely were intending to have at least one of us for breakfast.
Corner Stone
@craigie: How large? Approx pounds, roughly?
M. Bouffant
That’s interesting. About ten yrs. ago I saw three coyotes trotting down the middle of a street in West Hollywood, some distance from the hills where they usually hang. My car pool companions didn’t believe they were coyotes at first, but when I pointed out that dogs wouldn’t be using the middle of the street they agreed. (Also, no dog in West Hollywood would be as un-groomed as the coyotes were.)
The Sailor
I saw a coyote once on Sunset in West Hollywood. Just trotting down the street.
Corner Stone
@M. Bouffant:
Did they stop at the stoplights?
The Sailor
@M. Bouffant: Jinx! Also, coyotes move differently than dogs.
burnt
Urban coyotes and foxes are common in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’ve seen coyotes trotting across Cedar Lake on two occasions (yes, winter, coyotes are amazing but not that amazing) and a pair slipping into the cemetery north of Lake Harriet. Mr. and Mrs. Fox like to hang out near the Mississippi river in the parks and near various college campuses–the red-coated ones not the students although they are present as well.
We have our share of mountain lions and bears in the ‘burbs. Most/all of the felines have been expelled from the Black Hills in SoDak. One of them made it to CT:
http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2011/07/26/news/doc4e2f1341de52f489437623.txt
The b’ars are from northern Minnesota or western Wisconsin.
These days I think it is the foolish to allow your feline friend, canine companion, parrot, whatever outside. Wiley Coyote is in town and he is nearly continental wide.
Nicole
@Nina-the-first: Actually, Central Park has seen more than a few coyotes since I’ve lived in the city. Most likely pushed out of territory further upstate. One of the coyotes living at the Queens Zoo was caught in Central Park.
Nina-the-first
@Jay C: Via the LIRR? Cuz LI seems so… settled (no refuges, mountains, etc). I wonder if a bear or coyote might be an escapee from.. uh.. er… a NYC apartment?
edit: Nicole, that seems realistic. Thanks for the NYC lore info.
murakami
There’s a pack of coyotes here, in my very rural area. My big black dog will try to talk to them. She’s got a very deep voice but when she hears the coyotes, she does her best to sing soprano. Easily the most ridiculous sound I’ve heard from a canine.
When I lived in the mountains, my dogs and I had a couple of coyote encounters. We once ran across a young coyote off for a walk by himself. He was on top of a ridge and made the weird cry once he saw the dogs. As soon as he did that, the dogs gleefully ran up the ridge to see him. As soon as they got close, he charged and chased back down the hill. But, at the bottom of the hill my dogs got their courage back and chased him back up the hill. This cycle went back and forth five or six times until I told the dogs this was silly and we were going to start walking. The coyote shadowed us for a while before vanishing.
The second encounter was when my dogs were stalking something small and furry through the mountain scrub brush. Then, a coyote appeared and he was obviously stalking the same creature. So, of course, an argument started. Bark Bark Bark. Howl Howl Howl. And while these three were arguing, the little furry thing took advantage of the chaos and ran away. None of the would-be hunters noticed. Bark Bark Bark. Howl Howl Howl. They’d still be arguing to this day if I hadn’t called my dogs away.
M. Bouffant
@The Sailor:
Don’t remember which street they were on, a slow residential one (stop signs, not lights) but it was at least a couple of blocks south of Melrose, which is some distance from their hilly hangouts.
I’ve also seen some on Westbourne just south of Santa Monica.
Allen
@cathyx: I live up by OHSU, and the coyotes are thick up here, which I blame OHSU for, I can hear them going through unsecured garbage near the physical plant and Gaines Hall,. There was series in the Oregonian about urban coyotes and peoples responses to them. Like leaving food out for them (Alemeda, home of the clueless). My cats don’t like coyotes and come running home at first sniff of them. Bears I can do without, not after learning about Black Bear behavior. They will kill you and then eat you. Brown Bears will just likely mess you up.
Gus
@General Stuck: I talked to a retired game warden in northern Minnesota. He told me that the people there don’t like wolves because they’re competition for “their” deer.
redshirt
Call me when a coyote learns how to hail a cab in Midtown on a Saturday night.
M. Bouffant
That’s being mild. No one killed, but they’re out to get the bear:
Post-posting: Last two paragraphs are part of the blockquote, dammit!
This always happens in Google reader too. Is it to force us to click so we can see what’s blockquote & what’s original BJ content?
M. Bouffant
Like, do we have to blockquote every paragraph?
Roger Moore
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Mature trees. Crows will only nest in tall trees, which prevents them from moving into relatively new suburbs, at least in areas were suburbs have only new trees. As the suburb ages, the trees get tall enough for crows to nest, and they invade pretty quickly.
joel hanes
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
crows have displaced seagulls
Crows are longer-lived, and much smarter.
When people on the edges of cities used to keep chickens, they routinely shot crows — in my childhood, you could still collect 10 cents bounty over the counter at the city Police Station for a pair of detached crow feet.
About forty years ago, people mostly quit shooting crows, and they have moved into the urban forests with a vengeance. Tens of thousands roost in a line of red pines along the creek a block from my house here in Santa Clara. On fall evenings when the flocks gather, it’s like the Haunted Forest.
A similar situation holds with Canada geese, which in my youth were extremely shy of people, and confined themselves to wild settings and hilltop cornfields with a view — because America was once a nation of rural hunters, and Canada geese are tasty. That rural culture faded in the 50s, and now …
Deer are just mice with hooves. We have far more of them in North America now than there were in 1400 AD; far too many for the health of the deer themselves and for the health of our forests and gardens. Someday I’m gonna invent a better deer trap, and the world will beat a path to my door …
Anne Laurie
@M. Bouffant:
Yes, or else you can put two underscores / underlines (no more, no less) between each paragraph you want blockquoted together. The underlines won’t show up on the ‘page’ but they tell FYWP to stitch it.
Roger Moore
@Nina-the-first:
Wasn’t there one living in Central Park? I seem to remember reading about that.
tuna
In 08 the police shot a mountian lion in Chicago. See this Utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuB0Koi0OvU
Nancy Darling
@ms badger: Spotting a mountain lion would be a gift—they are so shy. We have them here in Arkansas, but Game and Fish won’t admit it because they would have to come up with a wild life management plan for them.
Springdale, AR had a bear within the city limits a few years ago. Bears regularly pass through Albuquerque on their way from the mountains to the Rio Grande—often raiding backyard fruit trees as they go. My daughter has been living up in Big Bear for the past few months and bears are almost a nightly sight around her cabin.
The bears that hang around campgrounds and towns like those around Big Bear Lake are probably more dangerous than the ones you see in the wilderness as they have lost their fear of humans. My son is a devotee of the High Sierras and he sees a bear or two every time he goes. He has never been closer than a quarter to a half mile from them as they take off when they see or hear him.
There are coyotes on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County these days. I suspect they moved down the Los Angeles River (which is mostly a concrete channel) to get there.
In Torrance we had raccoons, skunks, possums, and the rare fox siting. I have gone to work smelling vaguely of skunk more than once when my dogs mixed it up with them. Dogs never learn! My cats always sat back a few feet and let the critters eat their cat food on the front porch. I have seen a possum and a skunk eating from the cat food bowl at the same time. Raccoons move all over L.A. County via storm drains.
We also have Great Horned Owls on the Peninsula and they are amazingly huge looking in flight and are silent fliers.
Oddly, now that I live in the country, I never see any of them except as road-kill.
Mary
Coyotes are good for the songbird population because they keep feral cat numbers in check.
M. Bouffant
Crows & traffic lights. Not the only place I’ve read about this.
And I’ve wondered about city crows. Been in L.A. for close to forty yrs., but I don’t remember there being many around before the late ’90s. Maybe it’s my memory; it’s not as if the palm trees aren’t tall enough. Of course crows would have to compete w/ the rats who nest in the palms.
Nicole
@Nina-the-first: Google “Central Park” and “coyote” and you’ll be treated to a wealth of photos and news articles.
My toddler got to see a red-tailed hawk catch a rat just outside the 110th St playground last week. Landed not more than 4 feet away from us and calmly subdued the rat while parents and kids gathered and goggled. City wildlife has the same attitude as city people- “What the fuck are you looking at?” Heh.
FDRLincoln
Five years ago I saw a mountain lion in my neighbors yard here in suburban Lawrence, KS. I got a picture of it, too. Bright sunny day. It was just sauntering across the neighbor’s yard.
A couple of years later, I was standing in my yard talking with the postlady when a red fox trotted down the street less than 10 feet from us.
Allen
@Nancy Darling: I’ve been close to a cougar once, while fishing with my dad, uncle and cousin. I was walking around a very large boulder that was slightly in the stream bed. Walked around the boulder while maintaining my well taught fishing silence and right there was a cougar, taking a drink out of the river. Don’t know who was more scared, the cougar or me, but I do know ran the fastest. I learned then that there was no way I was ever going to out run a cougar.
M. Bouffant
@Anne Laurie: OK. Do I have to run the ‘graphs together, or just put the unders on a separate line?
Scamp Dog
We’ve got coyotes here on the north side of the Denver metro area. If my Border Collie notices them, she’ll start barking and jumping to drive them away, because that’s her duty as a herding dog, even though she doesn’t have a herd. I keep her on leash, after she decided to charge a pair of them one night. Fortunately, they decided to go somewhere else to find dinner instead of confronting her.
bcinaz
ITOH joggers look a lot like “cat toys” to mountain lions.
M. Bouffant
More murder in the city.
Corner Stone
I’ve seen more coyotes than I can count. Here in Texas they usually run 15 to 20 pounds. The foxes are roughly 12 to 15 pounds.
We also have bobcats here and let me tell you, they run about 25 pounds or more and would shred any pack of coyotes stupid enough to stand in against one.
I’ve been out in both CenTex and South Texas and seen mountain lion tracks but never seen one in the actual wild. Which I am thankful for.
One of the spookiest times I had in Central Texas was when I was hunting quail with a 20ga shotgun and came across a rutting area for feral hogs. I decided to call it a day and go back to camp.
craigie
@Corner Stone:
They were big, as coyotes go. Normally coyotes are pretty skinny, but tall, so 30ish pounds. But these were bigger, healthier critters – I’d say upwards of 35-40 pounds. It was intimidating. My dog is only 30 pounds…
Nancy Darling
@Corner Stone: I would rather chance upon a mountain lion than a feral hog. A hog can be a really nasty beast.
My nephew lives south of Austin and the fires came very close to them. Coyotes have been a big problem ever since. They have lost a couple of dogs to them. They had a buried electric fence to keep the dogs in, and since they lost two dogs, he has spent an ungodly amount for an addition to the existing fence to keep the coyotes out.
pseudonymous in nc
I think I saw a coyote down the road — I’m in a place where the city gets county very quickly, and nature comes with it. We have occasional bear sightings (mother and two cubs last year), the odd fox, and the usual assortment of possums and, I assume, raccoons. It appears that the possums get adventurous on the evening before trash day.
BobS
@burnt: I’m not sure that mountain lions are as common as you think in the Minneapolis suburbs. While it’s true that there have been a small number of verified sightings of what are thought to be transient males, and at least one hit by a car in the northern part of the state, biologists say that it’s likely that 99% of the sightings in Minnesota (as well as Wisconsin and Michigan, where many folks insist there’s a breeding population despite the lack of evidence) are erroneous.
Starting about 10 years ago there were several reported sightings of a wolverine in Michigan’s thumb. The last time wolverines were known to inhabit the state was 200 years ago and the last time they were found in the Great Lakes region was at least 100 years ago (northern Minnesota). In 2010 a female wolverine was found dead of natural causes in the Minden City State Game Area, about 90 miles north of Detroit.
JohnK
Was bicycling through Jasper AB this summer at 3am and a coyote stood in the middle of the street and yapped at me. Didn’t expect to be confronted by a coyote on a lighted city street next to downtown. Coyote probably didn’t expect a lighted bicyle. Jasper also has elk living in town too. Elk aren’t so bad. Moose are another story. Had a close encounter with a moose in Idaho who had no intention of avoiding me. Had to wait for bulwinkle to leave the trail on his own accord.
Origuy
I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s. And his hair was perfect.
Steeplejack
@M. Bouffant:
Like this:
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone:
Here just north of Boston it seems the coyotes are a hair larger (25-30lbs) and the foxes a bit smaller (around 10lbs). When the two come into contact, Wile E. drives Reynard out, with maximum prejudice. It’s still foxes in this particular neighborhood (between the offramps, the light-industrial park & the gun club) — the Spousal Unit sees them occasionally when he comes home late at night. But coyotes are well-established in the next town over, so I’m sure there will come a time when we won’t be able to let our 15lb. dogs out in the back yard without checking for predators first…
M. Bouffant
15-20 lbs.? I’ve had Maine Coon cats that weighed 17-18 lbs. All the L.A. coyotes I’ve seen were at least Alsatian/Yellow Lab size.
Last actual raccoon I saw in the L.A. was huge. He jumped out from under the ladyfriend’s car as were approaching it; may have been the dense underfur, but he must’ve weighed 25-30 lbs. & was at least the 28 inches Wiki suggests as their maximum size.
Maybe he was the raccoon king or something. Or there’s just more & better garbage here than in Texas.
Mnemosyne
@M. Bouffant:
G sees them all the time in our Glendale neighborhood — a lot of wildlife got driven down from the hills in the Station fire a few years ago, and quite a few of them stayed.
The most urban coyote I’ve seen was trotting down Barham Boulevard in Burbank, being trailed veeeerrrryyyy slowly by a Burbank PD car. I didn’t realize it was a coyote at first since it was so big — it was the size of a large German Shepherd.
Also, too — folks, don’t let your dogs “play” with coyotes. That’s how the coyotes lure the dogs out to kill and eat them. As far as the coyotes are concerned, your border collie isn’t a fellow canine, it’s delicious prey.
Corner Stone
@M. Bouffant: You have 60 to 80lbs coyotes? Those aren’t coyotes, those are the dogs from the Resident Evil movie series.
Don’t even get me started on raccoons. I have a blood oath against their kind.
Bastards.
Jerzy Russian
@Corner Stone:
Count your blessings. You could have come across Dick Cheney and received a face full of buckshot.
Brachiator
@M. Bouffant:
Around the same time that this was happening, there was a story about a bear roaming in a neighborhood, and pressing its nose against a guy’s window. Apparently, a bear has been a part of the neighborhood for quite a while (although the residents were not exactly sure that this was the same bear).
While I think that the residents’ laid back “the bear is part of the neighborhood, too” attitude might be going to far, I have reservations about Fish and Game’s conclusion that they have to kill the other bear. The officials in the story talk about “scientific evidence” that a bear that attacks a human might likely attack another, the bear’s behavior seemed more related to protecting her cubs than simply attacking a human. And if they kill the mother, are they going to try to find and save the cubs?
As an aside, in a tv report on this incident, a wildlife official claimed that the woman should not have rolled down the hill and played dead, but should have tried to make herself big, make noise and scare the bear off. I don’t know. I think this might have upped the ante on the female bear’s protectiveness toward her cubs and made matters worse.
I always wonder where even the experts get this stuff. Along these lines, I think the conventional wisdom that bears and other predators have a fear of humans is BS. Wariness, yeah, but fear?
I have often seen coyotes sauntering down the street in various parts of the San Gabriel Valley. Most times, they stroll down the middle of the street, which might give them options if a car is traveling down the same road. I think that the scientists need a hell of a lot more observations and analysis before they can assert that coyotes have awareness of one way streets and traffic patterns.
Also, too, especially in Southern California, I wonder whether the ongoing warmer weather and the continuing trend in some areas for small dogs as pets may be tempting coyotes to come down for light snacks.
Arclite
This is why I think coyotes are tolerated. I was jogging with my aunt in Irvine earlier this year at 6AM. We rounded a corner and came face to face with three of them. They just scooted out of the way and let us by, and both parties went about our business. That’s just not gonna happen with anything bigger.
Also, coyotes keep the rabbit population down to a minimum, and suburban gardeners love that benefit.
On the other hand, other rabbit-sized animals can be eaten which is a tragedy.
bad Jim
Three raccoons have taken to coming into my back yard, on a hilltop in Laguna Beach, to play with a practice golf ball they found in the bushes. It’s hard to take them seriously.
It goes without saying that we also have coyotes, deer, opossums, rats, and a rich assortment of birds.
I strongly agree with Anne Laurie’s suggestion that coyotes were less of a problem when dogs were allowed to roam at night, though cats may have been as much at risk back then, and dogs in heat subjected to a great deal of perhaps unwanted attention.
Brachiator
@bad Jim:
I don’t know. This doesn’t make much sense to me. In Southern California, coyotes have always been a part of the landscape, especially in areas like Laurel Canyon, where wooded areas are right near residential spaces.
Lots of other variables at play here as well. I’m not sure that there is any real way of testing this speculation.
bad Jim
@Brachiator: Pet dogs running loose aren’t hunting to survive, so cats and small dogs might fare better in that situation. The experiment has been run before, but perhaps the numbers were never collected. I’d guess it’s a knowable unknown.
In many late night rambles through unfamiliar neighborhoods in Berkeley I found myself being followed by a dog, which meant that I had to walk back to where it picked me up and chase it away, hopefully back to its home. Coyotes don’t do that. They also don’t lie on the sidewalk and refuse to let you pass until you throw a stick for them a few times, which one insouciantly threatening German Shepherd did to me one afternoon.
Dogs I’ve known have stolen lunches and stuffed toys from children, which is reason enough not to let them run loose. Sea gulls do the same things, though.
One of the funniest things I ever saw was a deer calmly munching the roses in the planter in my front yard, serenely confident that I wasn’t paying attention, until it suddenly realized that I was, and bolted.
sherparick
@Hypatia’s Momma: There is a huge population of suburban and urban whitetail deer in most mid-western and eastern cities (I am not sure of the South below the Virginia-North Carolina line) who are suitable prey for wolves and perfect for mountain lions. Also, their is a bipedal, ominvorous, invasive primate species that is also just the perfect size for mountain lions, but most lions must have a sense of reality of the danger of such prey as there are only 3 such attacks on record the last 12 years, even though there must have been countless opportunities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_cougar_attacks_in_North_America
sherparick
A nice short article on expansion of the midwest grey wolf population and the limits on that growth. (The Chicago suburbs may see an occasional lone wolf, but unlikely to have see a pack since wolf culture is not as adaptable as coyote culture to urban and suburban forest and surrounding farmlands.) http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=198553