Coyote Ugly

In Rye, NY, two recent coyote attacks on young girls have once-placid suburbia in a panic. As this New York Times article reports,

Here’s more detail on the incidents that have inspired such fear.

Coyote attacks on humans are fairly rare — this study by Ohio State researchers Lynsey A. White and Stanley D. Gehrt documented just 142 attacks between 1960 and 2006 in the U.S., an average of about three per year. And nobody’s sure why these particular furry perps in Rye decided to go after small humans instead their more typical fare of rabbits, squirrels or the contents of the neighborhood’s trash cans. White and Gehrt found that 37 percent of coyote attacks on humans were clearly for the purpose of trying to eat them, while another 22 percent were “investigative,” i.e., attempts to determine whether a victim might make a good food source. Of the remainder, 7 percent were prompted by rabies, 6 percent by the desire to eat one of the humans’ pets, and 4 percent were in defense of coyote pups. Another 24 percent were unexplained.

The reality that coyotes not only don’t fear us but actually contemplate us as tonight’s dinner is a bit unnerving, especially to eastern suburbanites whose knowledge of the species is probably defined by Wile E. Coyote, the bumbling predator who is doomed to perpetual humiliation in the Road Runner animated shorts. If coyotes had TV and watched cartoons, no doubt they’d be as irked by Warner Brothers as Neanderthal holdouts are ticked off by Geico’s “So Easy, Even a Caveman Can Do It!” slogan. In reality, Canis latrans, also known by the less-cute name of the American jackal, is not only an adept hunter, but also is one of the few medium-to-large sized animals that have not only survived human civilization’s encroachment upon their wild habitat, but actually have thrived.

As this 1998 Audubon magazine article details, in the late 19^th Century, coyotes were found primarily in the western U.S. But since then, they’ve actually extended their range, and by the end of the 20^th Century had been  been spotted in every state except Hawaii–thanks largely to humans killing off the bears and wolves who were their natural enemies.

Humans tried to kill off coyotes, too, but the collie-sized distant cousins of the domestic dog, who’ve successfully evaded bigger creatures over the past 1.8 million years, proved to be too, well, wily. Coyotes are amazingly athletic creatures, with a top running speed of 40 miles per hour. They don’t see particularly well, but they make up for it with a finely tuned sense of smell and acute hearing. Their creepy-sounding howls are actually a sophisticated form of communication that they use to warn of danger and to announce their presence to other members of their species. They move around early in the morning and late at night in small packs. They have big litters with as many as 19 pups in them, and shuttle them surreptitiously between multiple dens to elude predators on their trail. (And Dick Cheney thought he was the only one with an undisclosed location.)

In New York State, it’s unclear whether coyotes have migrated recently into the area, or always were a low-key presence. As the New York Suburban Coyote Study home page notes, early settlers in the region described an unfamiliar animal that they called the “brush wolf,” which may actually have been the coyote. In any case, however, about 20,000 to 30,000 of them now live in the state, so it looks like Rye residents are going to have no choice but to get used to their presence. As Ohio State’s Gehrt explained to the Times:

New York State wildlife officials provide these tips for avoiding confrontations with coyotes.