Fun with her found tetherball
Three postings back, on the third of this month, I wrote a post about the unusual frenzied behavior of a young loner male and his brief “tangential breaching”, if that’s the right wording, of the species-divide which is a cornerstone for coexistence between humans and coyotes in urban areas. I described him as *full of beans* more than anything else. The behavior appears to be related to what I’m describing in this posting.
This current posting — based on what I observed several years ago — is also about the overly exuberant, energetic behavior of a young loner, in this instance a female, who for a while also purposefully flirted with the accepted species-divide between wild coyotes and humans. With this young female, the behavior occurred time and again over a three year span. With few exceptions, this female did stay away from humans in terms of distance and not physically engaging — but at times it was as though she were “flaunting” it on some level. Easy coexistence is of course based on firmly maintaining a wall of separation. Note that “dogs and coyotes”, as opposed to “humans and coyotes”, breach the divide all the time: they constantly communicate visually and interact with threats and defenses — lunging, barking, chases and even nipping. This posting is about humans and coyotes, not dogs and coyotes.
We all know that coyotes are highly social: they normally mate for life and live in families. The few exceptions that I’ve seen include the death of a mate, some rare *divorces* thought they normally pair up again, and transients who have not been able to secure a territory or mate for themselves. Coyotes in families interact and communicate constantly with one another. But what if such interaction is out of reach for one of them because there is no bonded companion or family around and therefore no opportunity to socialize with any members of their own species — this is a question I’ve asked myself to try and explain her behavior. It seems that a loner under these circumstances for an extended length of time — in her case it was three years — might seek it from another species, even if only psychologically and even if at a distance — i.e., virtually? It appeared to me, after many observations, that this loner coyote was starved for social interaction: and she appears to have picked humans (often with their dogs) for connecting with in this way. Interestingly, once she found a mate, she dropped this behavior absolutely and totally, which supports my speculated explanation.
Coyotes by nature are secretive in their behaviors and wary enough of us humans to avoid us almost always. However, over time in an urban environment, with constant human presence, they often begin to ignore us as benign beings rather than as “risks to be avoided”. And we humans normally think of their proximity to us as a “risk” to ourselves, so we label it as “brazen” or “bold”. Some people consider simply seeing coyotes in an urban setting as unacceptable and risky. In ranching communities, seeing coyotes on ranching properties is cause for killing them. So there’s avoidance on both sides which is very mutual. But over time, we, too, learn that they are pretty benign and we begin to accept them at closer range than we used to, especially if we don’t have a dog with us.
The young female’s behavior consisted of regularly sitting on a high knoll in plain view during daylight hours at the height of dog/human activity which she was there to watch, and of course, she in turn was watched back: there appeared to be mutual fascination between her and the human world. She seemed to know that she was being admired — coyotes, like the rest of us, can sense this sort of thing. She would then suddenly get excited and “perform” as in the video. She could easily have remained quietly observing or retreated to the bushes where she would not have been visible by anyone, but she chose not to do so. She chose to draw attention to herself, creating a visual interaction of sorts.
Coyotes feel they must respond to dogs chasing them or even passing through their territories. Hunting is another must which often takes place in the visual presence of humans, though normally at some distance from us and predominantly during the darker hours. On the other hand, in the two instances I’ve described in this and the previous posting, the flirtingly marginal interactions or visual engagements of coyotes with humans were purely a matter of choice on their part — no need was involved.
Each coyote is an individual with a unique personality. I don’t know if individual characteristics contributed to the behavior: some coyotes tend to be innately much more gregarious while others are more shy — you can see this in their interactions with each other, and in their reactions to approaching people or dogs. Although humans deliberately feeding her or even just leaving out food, might have initiated a gradual suppression of her natural wariness for awhile, neither she nor the male in my previous post were at all approaching humans for food — that is a separate type of behavior..
On the other side of the spectrum of this hyperactive attempt at interaction and attention-seeking are the coyotes who remain relaxed within close proximity of calm human presence, unobtrusively, out-of-the-way, quietly and without any fanfare: I’ve seen this in areas where no dogs are around. They actually aren’t interacting with humans, rather, they are simply there, mostly ignoring people only 20 feet away — a nod of acceptance might be exchanged, but that’s it — they aren’t seeking attention or performing. This happens in some community gardens where coyotes have been seen napping regularly in some of the planter boxes, in spite of there being plenty of gardeners close by working their plots. The gardeners respect them and leave them alone. Again, the one issue has been when dogs — who are not allowed in the gardens but enter anyway — come through and go after them. So here, coexistence in a very small space is not at all a problem for anyone, coyote or human, unless dogs appear.
With an ever-present and large urban human community, it seems logical that intelligent and curious coyotes might explore options beyond strict avoidance of humans. Maybe the examples I have given are simply manifestations of this.
Napping in a planter box with a beehive of gardeners quietly at work close by
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