Asking For Help And Receiving Some

08 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment

by yipps in coyote behavior, self-medication, urban coyote ailments, video Tags: , ,

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 Slide show has 21 slides.

I was able to get these shots between wafts of fog that kept blowing in and leaving. What is going on here is that one coyote is bothered by something on her tail area. Whatever it was, she wanted it off — possibly it was causing discomfort — maybe it was a burr or something like that which was pinching or had become embedded in her skin.

What is of interest is that this coyote was able to communicate her need to the other, and the other tried his best to help. However, the problem was not solved by his attempts to help, as can be seen by the coyote with the problem trying again to remove the source of discomfort on her own in slide #9. It appears that she was unable to do this.

Slide #10 shows that she then continued soliciting his help: walking or rolling in front of him and thrusting that sore spot in front of him.  Maybe he knew his help would be futile, or maybe he got tired of helping, or maybe the message was not so clear this time, but his interest shifted to leading them both into the woods and out of my view. I’m hoping that maybe he helped her some more once they were under cover.

Indigestion

19 Jun 2011 1 Comment

by yipps in bad food, coyote behavior, foraging, indirect signs of coyote presence, self-medication

I don’t think very many of us give thought to wild animals getting ill or feeling ill or aging. I once watched a coyote squint as it looked into the distance. I wondered if the coyote’s vision was getting blurry — like humans when they age. I wondered if their aging vision could benefit from the things we humans have so ingeniously created for ourselves: lasik or glasses?

Anyway, coyotes do get ill and they do feel bad sometimes. Today I watched a case of indigestion exacerbated by basking in an intense hot sun. I can relate to this, because when I have eaten a heavy meal and then stayed out in the direct sun for too long, I have felt that meal become sluggish rather than being digested easily.

So after two hours of basking in the intense sun and obviously having a blast doing so, the coyote moved off to a shady spot where the look in its eyes conveyed that same intestinal discomfort that we all have felt at times.  Of course, I didn’t know what was going on and wouldn’t until this sequence of events was over.

Soon, the coyote got up slowly and sluggishly wandered down a hillside where it began yanking at the tallest strands of grass and ingesting them. After several minutes of eating grasses, the coyote began to heave, billowing its stomach in and out until it’s mouth opened wide and out came an astonishing mass of undigested food. It must have astonished the coyote, too, because it stayed there looking at the pile, and then sniffed it over carefully. Finally, it tried — unsuccessfully — to “bury” the mess by using its nose to push old grasses over the pile. Then it walked slowly away.

I was able to make out that it was an entire gopher, still intact but somewhat decomposed. Gophers in this area can get pretty close to a full pound in weight. Coyotes eat gophers, not by tearing them apart, but by crunching the bones so that the entire animal can fit down it’s throat. My theory is that this huge meal and the heat of the sun made for difficult digestion, which in turn caused a nauseating feeling and then the self-medication. I’ve seen regurgitation before, but not with all the detail I saw this time. The coyote wandered off and out of sight, but not until two more stops were made for more grasses.

Parasites

16 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by yipps in coyote behavior, coyote health problems, self-medication, urban coyote ailments Tags:

Zooming into one of my photos allowed me to see the sores and bugs that inhabit a coyote’s behind area. There are some ticks and some red, wettish skin which looks like it has been scratched and licked. Too bad a paw can’t reach this area for scratching. What ends up happening is that the coyote bites at it to help reduce its distress.

I’ve seen coyotes practically trip over themselves in their need to take care of the “itch” on their behinds right away — it must be an intense annoyance. Intense scratching and scooting are signs of intestinal parasites.

Self-Medication? Scat Left On A Path: A Message?

06 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment

by yipps in communication, coyote behavior, perfume bath, self-medication, urban coyote ailments, wallowing Tags:

I watched this coyote poop only a few paces before it stopped to sniff. It sniffed at the base of a tree and then at a spot on the ground close to the tree. The spot close to the tree was the greater attraction. The coyote remained sniffing here and then began to lower itself onto the spot to “roll” or “wallow” on it. The coyote only went so far as to lower its head sideways onto the spot when it changed its mind. Instead, it walked a few paces forwards and pooped, again, within a few inches of the spot it had been smelling — close enough to be called “on” it. Then it walked on. I was able to see that the coyote had sniffed a three-inch piece of cooked fish with the bone intact. How this got to the path I don’t know: we have both raccoons and coyotes who could have removed it from a patio meal plate left out, or from a garbage can.

So, after having been attracted to the fish’s strong scent, the coyote began to roll on it, but then decided to poop on it instead. Hmmm — two things, probably separate things, were going on here: rolling on something had its own purpose; and pooping right here had another — maybe?

1) Was the pooping a form of marking, of leaving a message? The coyote had just pooped a few paces earlier, with me behind on the coyote’s path. I’ve observed this same situation a couple of times before. It pooped only a few paces after the first pile: was the poop saved purposefully, like skunk scent, to be used when needed?  Was this at all related to the “rolling on the fish”?

2) Could rolling on something, such as the fish, constitute “marking IT” — the coyote leaving its own scent there, a sort of “trumping” what was already there, the same as when a coyote marks over dog poop or urine it has found? Or, as I have written before, was the coyote trying to “perfume” itself, either for the fun of it or as some kind of “disguise”? OR, and this is my new idea, is there some kind of self-medication involved in rolling on specific items — the same way we humans use ointments? Might rolling in dead smelly stuff ward off skin mites? This coyote does have patches of fur loss. Mange is a common ailment of coyotes, and can actually kill them, though I don’t know if this particular coyote is afflicted specifically with mange.

A hypothesis: I’ve gone to the Internet to find that some of the skin “treatments” for mange include apple cider vinegar or borax or a borax/hydrogen peroxide combination or even neem oil with its sulfur smelling properties. I tried to figure out what these might have in common with the smelly things I have seen a coyote rub itself on: dead lizard, dead snake, dead mole, rancid fish, and with horse manure and fish-emulsion used as fertilizer which I’ve seen dogs rub themselves in. It appears that the dead animals were left in their locations specifically to be wallowed on over and over again. Decomposition produces gases and acids. Might the mites responsible for mange be warded off by the byproducts of decomposing tissue? Or might the Ph level of these byproducts be soothing to mite-infested skin? I’m wondering if these byproducts of decomposition have some of the same properties as apple cider vinegar or borax or neem oil? I’m not a chemist or biochemist. This is just a thought I had. Feedback is welcome!