Coyote Yipps

I had been watching a 10-month-old coyote youngster — I’ll call him “Sibling” here — behave rather hesitantly — maybe apprehensively. Instead of venturing forth to hunt, as was his habit, he was sitting and simply watching — in fact, watching one spot in the distance — as if waiting for something to emerge or appear. The evening rendezvous would soon begin, but why the apprehension? The rendezvous is the evening meetup where, after sleeping usually in somewhat separate locations, the coyotes come together to meet and greet and interact, usually joyfully with wiggles, body hugs, reaffirmations of statuses and squeals of excitement.

I turned away to speak to someone, and when I turned back, there was Brother, lying over him. ‘On top’ is usually dominance in the coyote world. I missed seeing their initial greeting, but I sensed that the first hint of rivalry might be creeping into their interactions — even if ever so mildly at this point. These eventually lead to discord. Dad, of course, can sense these things in their subtlest form and way before I’m able to pick up on them. He will interfere to control it: Dad is the apha when it comes to his offspring. The video captures this.

I’ve incorporated some of this posting as captions into this video clip to explain what is going on.

Sibling takes Brother’s rough and overpowering behavior  in stride — he nuzzles his Brother. All is well between them.

In the next scene, Brother has found a dead mole lying around and subtlelly provokes Sibling to react: “Haha, look what I have.” Sibling is not so sure he wants to enter into this rivalrous game. He hesitates and looks away at first, but then rises to the bait and some fun begins. They chase and then this turns into a tug-of-war.

Just then Dad rushes in — he knows his youngsters well and Brother has been more uppitty than usual lately. Dad needs to keep the nascent rivalry in check. He has to be firmly in control always, and use physical power when his youngsters don’t readily submit to him.

Brother immediately hits the ground submissively when he sees Dad, which causes him to let go of the mole. Sibling slithers away with the mole. Dad is surprised to see him slither away like that, as you can see in the video. He stands over Brother for a moment, but soon Brother also is able to escape his Dad’s grasp. As far as the youngsters are concerned, Dad’s behavior is standard and pro-forma — they don’t appear to be much concerned about it.

But Dad didn’t get the submission he wanted — especially from Brother. Dad immediately heads for Brother and puts him down and keeps him down this time. [If you are quick enough to notice, you’ll see that as Sibling runs away from Dad and Brother, he picks up the mole that had been taken back by Brother during the split second when the camera was not focused on him]. After what seems like an interminable time, Brother again slips away from Dad again, but within a minute, Dad is again standing over him.

Notice that Sibling uses the occasion of his brother’s being restrained to repeatedly flip his mole into the air tauntingly — he knows Brother can’t do anything to get the mole back because he’s under Dad’s thumb. This time, when Dad leaves, Brother remains lying down. This, apparently, satisfies Dad’s requirement. But that’s the end of the mole game.

Finally 10-month-old sister joins the group. Dad demands her submissiveness, but he treats her in a much milder way than her brothers. After she respectfully stoops to his bidding, the family runs off for their evening trekking.