In the past, these two male siblings have always played rather casually. Their “play fighting”, always ended with two “winners” and the play session was always fun for both. Recently, the play fighting has turned more intense: it has become important for the more dominant one to win, which means that the other one “looses.”
In this sequence here, it is the less dominant coyote who found a frayed softball and took it off to chew on it. The other one came up, dominating the first one, and ended up taking the ball. The looser walked off defeated in the last photo. Notice in the photos that the aggressor was always on top or with the ball.
More and more, recently, I have seen the same aggressor coyote intrude on what the other one is doing and take over. We can all guess where this behavior is leading to and what the end result might be.
