Coyote Yipps

This video depicts a yearling male taunting his two-year-old sister with an unusual technique he picked up from his mother. Coyotes learn by observing and imitating, which is definitely what went on here. The only coyote I know who regularly uses this body-blow method for discipline or fighting, is these coyotes’ mother who has used it at various times towards her daughter, this same two-year-old sister. The yearling male obviously picked it up from her by watching and imitating her, and in this video he bangs his sister tauntingly and mercilessly with this new-found skill. He is doing it simply to bully and harass her.

What led to this is that older sister for a while attempted dominating younger brother and got rather aggressive in doing so. This may be because younger brother had the habit of following big sister around and imitating her, and as he did so, he would get in her way. So Sister reacted. Soon, Mom interfered and forbade daughter from any aggression towards her younger brother. If Sister showed any aggression towards younger brother, Mom would interfere with an aggressive put-down towards the daughter. The result was that younger brother became more and more taunting, and the daughter had no recourse except to put up with it, which she is doing here, as he practices and perfects his body-blow technique on her.

Interestingly, he’s the one who ended up dispersing, of his own volition, at a year-and-a-half of age, whereas she is still part of her birth family.