Information and stories about San Francisco coyotes: behavior & personality, coexistence & outreach, by Janet Kessler: Unveiling first-hand just how savvy, social, sentient and singular coyotes really are!
You might recall that Lapis is the one-blue-eyed coyote pup I wrote about several months ago. I saw her a few days ago at almost 8 months of age: an update is in order. The change that struck hard is that the bright blue right eye of hers is no longer blue. The iris of that blue eye is now double the size of a regular eye — it almost looks like a glass eye. The iris is the colored structure in the front of the eye that regulates the amount of light that can enter the retina by controlling the size and diameter of the pupil. I don’t know how much light her eye lets in, but I would assume it is affected by the iris’s size. It seems obviously damaged or diseased, but it doesn’t seem to impact her activity.
Health issue in urban coyotes can develop at any time, but it’s sad when they develop early, as with this eye condition. I hope it’s not something that impacts her life too much. Last year pups in several of the coyote families developed neurological walking problems which they were either born with, or they developed very early after birth, possibly due to distemper. Other ailments I’ve encountered can be found HERE.
The day I saw Lapis, she was with one of her brothers and demanded that he interact with her: it was almost sparring behavior without the need to win. She’s comparatively petite compared to him but that didn’t stop her from engaging with him as an equal. He, on the other hand, I could tell, was careful not to overpower her. The roughhousing and wrestling he engages in with his brothers did not occur here.
I don’t know if he knows that something is wrong with her eye, but I would guess he does: coyotes are super aware of temperature differences, smells and visuals. For instance, they seem to know exactly where the hidden ticks are on each other. In another instance, I watched the mate of a young fellow sniff his broken ankle when that happened, and I knew that she knew it was injured and hurt him.
Below is a gallery of photos I took that day showing the sparring and interactions between these two siblings. The strong bond between them encompasses caring, playing, teasing, provoking, patience, and affection, in addition to warm companionship. Coyotes are hugely social and it is obvious that this relationship is important to both of them, and possibly is the highlight of their day. Things to notice: their communication through intense eye-to-eye contact, her jabbing him with her forepaws, affectionately biting his ear, biting his neck, grabbing his hindquarters, grabbing his head, putting her head over his shoulder, as she incited him to react to her. Notice he calmly allowed her to poke and flit as she pleased, and then gently and affectionately — almost protectively — reacted companionably more than anything else! [You can click on one of the photos to then scroll through them].
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
Aging. From what I’ve seen in the urban environment of San Francisco, coyotes who reach 11 and 12 years of age are at the upper limit of their lifespans. Compare this to their lifespan in captivity which is about 14 to 16 years, or to their lifespan in the wild-wild, which I’m told is only 3 to 5 years. By the time they are old they may be on a second mate who would be younger than they are. They will have gained greying brows and a more worn look to their faces. Bones and muscles become worn out, so it takes them longer to get up, and as they get up you can see the stiffness and some unsteadiness that wasn’t there before, until they start moving: it’s harder for me to detect an aging coyote when they are moving. Fur, of course, hides a lot of the wear and tear they have accumulated, the same way that clothing hides it in humans.
Claimed territories. Some of these oldsters remain on their claimed territories right until the very end of their lives and then the territory is acquired by default by their offspring and/or mates: these territories can be owned by the same genetic families over many generations. On the other hand, in other territorial situations, the death of a mate might contribute to an inability for the surviving mate to hold on to a territory. Aging in itself is a weakening factor, leading an oldster to abandon his/her territory voluntarily. I’ve wondered if abandoning a territory might also be related to the end of a coyote’s ability to reproduce: this is pure conjecture on my part — I have no proof of this, it just crossed my mind. Territorial intruders who appear off and on in all territories are normally fended off fairly easily by a mated pair. However, without a mate and with growing weakness due to age or possibly illness, a territorial confrontation, or even a battle could ensue and the weaker claimants would be forced to leave. This happened at the Presidio in 2019.
What happens to the coyotes who leave or have been driven out from their territories? I seldom see them again, or if I do, it’s only briefly before they are gone forever. Because I never see them again, I am unaware of how their lives continue, if indeed they do continue. Their old territories become occupied by the newcomers and life goes on.
Interlopers. But sometimes, the displaced coyote who once owned a territory becomes an interloper who I’ve been able to follow, even if only sporadically. An interloper is a coyote who has no territory to call his own anymore, but who lives in the interstices between other claimed territories. Unless you know the individual coyote, you wouldn’t know his situation. The older or more injury-compromised these coyotes are, the less likely that they can take and hold onto a new territory. Such a coyote is Ash.
Before I go on with Ash, I want to mention that at the other end of the life cycle, dispersing yearlings all become interlopers until they find their own territories. Both yearling loners and yearlings who have found mates along the way and are still looking for territories are in this situation. They live and roam quietly on the fringes and interstices between territories and pass through claimed territories as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, assessing mostly through smells what the situation is in these territories: through smell, they can tell what coyotes have been around and how regularly they’ve been around and probably their reproductive condition and much more: they would be able to tell right off if one of the alphas is no longer around. If they find a vacant niche, moving in can be easy, but if all territories are taken, if conditions are right, they might actually fight for the territory. Those that don’t find territories after dispersing here in San Francisco appear to move south and out of the city in their continued search for a home, and along the way many are killed by cars [per a three-year, radio-collar study by the Presidio from 2015].
You’ll recall my posting about Ash: https://coyoteyipps.com/2023/08/23/ash-aging-injury-decline/. He left his territory because of an injury. I don’t know how he got the injury, and I don’t know what happened to his mate, but another coyote pair are now the alphas in the territory he left behind — and it appears to be a son of his but I’m not absolutely sure about this. As I wrote in that previous posting about Ash, I didn’t think Ash was going to last very long without his territory because he was getting along in years and had an extremely compromising injury which turned him into a *tripod* coyote, but he has proven me wrong. Since I wrote that post, he has appeared in various spots around the south and center part of the city, and I actually saw him in my own neighborhood at 5:30 a couple of mornings ago. He has been without a territory for well over a year now.
Ash on October 29th
In fact, I’m wondering if the city’s interloper population might be growing — if there are more like him.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about another interloper, a strapping young fellow, who intruded into a claimed territory: https://coyoteyipps.com/2023/10/22/intruder-dynamics-at-work/. This is a coyote I didn’t recognize, but his youth made me think that he was dispersing and looking for both a territory and a mate. I watched the fellow as he sat very still and listened to the howling chorus of the resident family. That must have summed up the situation for him because he left and never came back.
Two years ago I watched an interloper move into a territory where the alpha male had died of old age. He sired a litter, but apparently there were compatibility issues with the remaining alpha female there — it was very obvious she didn’t like him. When the pups were just four months old, that fellow left. The next year, he was the alpha in another territory, this time remaining for a full year. But after a year, he is now gone and I’ve not seen him since then. I can only reflect on the huge difference between this fellow and the family who has been tied to their territory for multiple generations.
And I’ve written about what I called a *Gypsy* coyote pair that actually picked up and moved across the city a couple of times, each time claiming and becoming the owners of the new territory they had moved to for several years where they raised their pups. Eventually this coyote pair ended up divorcing: yes, that also happens.
Who, in the way of coyotes, gets a territory, and who is excluded? Within urban areas, as I suppose within any area, coyotes gain advantages over conspecifics based on luck, being in the right place at the right time, physical size or strength, force of personality, ties to the family territory they were born into (generational territories), intelligence and a savvy nature when it comes to dealing with other coyotes — the same kind of the advantages humans have in moving forward with their lives and gaining choice territories. Less advantaged conspecifics are left with less advantageous territories or no territories. And competitors such as foxes have been pushed to the periphery of the city. Nature is not fair.
Meanwhile, back at Ash’s old homestead — a territory where he had been the alpha for years, where he had been through a couple of mates and raised many litters — the territory is now owned by another alpha pair who had a litter this year — the alpha male appears to be Ash’s son, though I need to confirm this. Of interest — and I bring this up because of the very different situations each coyote finds him/herself in — I notice that there’s a third coyote, a yearling, who appears to have been adopted into the family. Yes, adoptions take place, especially of injured or weak youngsters: I usually see it for under a month when a youngster is dispersing, but could it last longer? This yearling has been allowed into the territory, but does not hang around the territorial claimants as far as I have seen: my prediction is that he will soon move on: he’ll become an interloper himself. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn-havfPAwG/. From what I’ve seen, owning a territory confers much more survivability on coyotes.
So, every coyote and coyote family situation I’ve observed is different — no different from the way it is in humans. I’m told this individuality is due to our being generalists and therefore having amazing adaptability: we and they are not meant to survive in just one type of environmental niche or situation, as opposed to animal specialists who require unique situations and habitats for survival. This adaptability allows different potential traits to be developed in each of us as needed or sometimes as desired. So all generalizations regarding coyotes need to be qualified with many exceptions. The situations I describe here are ones I have seen; I’m sure there are many more variations. For more, you can type into the blog search box: territories, intruders, interlopers, dispersals.
I’ve now observed and experienced this kind of frenzied behavior twice by two different coyotes, two instances of it during my 16+ years of observations.
The behavior involved a young, loner coyote with what looked like an intense case of the zoomies. It’s not something that we normally associate with a wild animal. But it indeed happened. The young coyote acted high-spirited, feisty, and cocky-sure of himself. That people were around and observing seems to have been a contributing factor: the coyote appeared to be *performing* for us.
Apparently, this same coyote felt brave enough to approach someone in the same way the previous day. That young lady ran from him in fear and then tripped, making the experience a terrifying one for her.
So today, shortly after dawn, this young male coyote appeared on a large expanse of empty lawn which runs along a sidewalk. He had been sighted on the lawn every morning for about a week at about the same time. When I first set eyes on him, he was engaged in galloping spurts of back and forth zoomies while bobbing his head up, down and sideways like a pony, with sudden direction changes and sometimes chasing his tail. The brief spurts ended as quickly as they began with a few minutes of rest: lying down and looking around to see who was watching him. I was not positioned for taking photos until after the burst of zoomies.
Zoomies, feints: testing? (10/11)
I situated myself close to a tree and stood still about 100 feet away with my camera focused on him. The couple of other people who had been watching him walked on. He was aware of me and that I was watching him — coyotes are well aware of all of their surroundings. Then he suddenly leaped up and darted in my direction, seemingly playfully, with eyes fixed on me. This is when I changed the camera to video mode. I didn’t move as he performed a number of short charges/feints towards me, tauntingly ? testing ?, but then darted away. It was almost a semi-grazing movement towards and then away from me, but he never came into contact with me as he repelled off to the side, and not as close as it appears in the video — mine is a 150-650mm lens which can’t take anything close. My iPhone would have worked better, but that was in my pocket. I’ve seen this coyote behavior towards dogs, where play bows are incorporated into the behavior. The incident of over a year ago included these play bows, but not this time. I stood still and didn’t move or react as I held my camera focused on him, and then I slowly backed away, one step at a time as I kept filming him.
Was this play? Or maybe he was hoping I would run away, like I was told the last person did. Was he testing his own power of bluff against our human species’? He may have wondered why I was watching him and may have decided to figure out my intentions by testing if I would react or respond to his approaching me.
After I backed up about 20 feet, he stopped his dashings-in and sideways, and approached and sniffed the spot where I had been standing. After absorbing as much information as he could about me he ran off doing tail chases and tumbling on the lawn, no different from what our domestic dogs do during play. After a few of these he came back and looked at me out of the corner of his eye, again bobbing his head a little, like a young pony defying its owner. I could tell he was deciding whether to come towards me again. But I stood perfectly still, without reacting, holding my camera in front of my face, and that’s when he turned around and then flitted off — he had been unable to get a reaction out of me.
While I continued to watch, the coyote approached another person from behind, but that person wasn’t even aware of it and walked on. The coyote then sat down and waited, but no one else came by, so he then jumped up and darted off and out of view for good.
This was not an *attack* by any means. This animal did not come towards me to assault me, bite me, or injure me, even though the combination of cockiness, energy, and testing, could be used to label him as *bold* in a world where we expect him to shy away from us. It was a uniquely interesting interaction.
In the previous case, several years ago, that coyote had been profusely fed by humans. In this case today, I don’t know if there has been feeding going on: I’m hoping to find out. I’m speculating that the behavior might have been, on some level, territorial in nature — possibly trying to push people out without being aggressive about it? In other words, a sort of, “I’m only teasing” with a kernel of truth?
What should anyone do if they encounter this type of behavior? I myself was documenting him, so I remained totally neutral and didn’t react at all. I could have, and would suggest that others, treat him as though you had a dog with you: simply walk away calmly. However, if he advances critically close, close enough to potentially touch you, get super angry and toss some 1″ stones towards (not at) his legs to show him that his behavior is not appreciated or acceptable. I want to reiterate that this is RARE behavior. But if it happened to me, it could happen to you, and you should know about it.
Appropriate terms I’ve used for this situation:
zoomies: a sudden burst of frenetic energy in which an animal (typically a dog or cat) runs to and fro. “Many dogs get the zoomies after a bath”
frenzied: wildly excited and uncontrolled
frenetic: fast and energetic in a rather wild and uncontrolled way
feint: to give a false appearance or to fake something
testing: revealing a person’s capabilities by putting them under strain; challenging.
full of beans: very lively and have a lot of energy and enthusiasm.
grazingly: to brush closely against ( he came close, but there was no contact)
cocky sure: marked by overconfidence or presumptuousness
bold: not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff
The start of any of my observation sessions involves always identifying WHO the coyote is that I’m watching. I use their faces to identify them because their coats not only change over the seasons as they shed and grow, but they also appear different under different lighting and weather conditions. Once I have their identity down, I of course can relate any behaviors I see to what I already know about the coyote.
To begin with, the coyote I began watching was facing away so I couldn’t positively identify him when I started. From his general shape I initially assumed he was the alpha male of the family that lived in this location. Several times he gave me a profile view, but that resulted in more questions than answers. And then I saw his face straight on and his light eyes: no, this was definitely not one of the coyotes who lived here — it was an intruder!
The coyote we saw faced away from us. When he finally looked over at us, we could see that this indeed was an intruder, not part of the resident family.
Coyotes are allowed to briefly pass through claimed territories without incident if they do so quickly, without challenging the resident coyotes. Intruders have been rare in this particular territory. Maybe there have been as many as five in this one territory in the entire time I’ve been observing — over the past 16 years — so it was actually special and exciting to see him there! A friend of mine and I watched intently. The coyote remained in the one location we had found him, standing most of the time, and then finally sitting down, always facing away from us.
While he sat there, the resident family began to howl. Were they aware of him? I don’t really know if the howling was related to him: it was not particularly intense or threatening, as far as I could hear. I took a short blurry video and have included that so that you can hear the family vocalizations and the intruder’s lack of vocal response. Although he remained quiet and did not respond to their howls, he was picking up as many signals as he could about the situation, and you can be sure that he was indeed reacting internally. The video is blurry because the camera automatically focused on the long surrounding grasses, but the important point is to hear the vocalizations, and see that this outsider listened intently. If he were part of the family he most likely would have responded. When the howling stopped, he slowly got up and began moving away from the area.
Walking away while continually looking over his shoulder to where the howling had come from.
We followed him for a short distance as he headed slowly, deliberately and decisively out of the park, but then we turned back — we didn’t want to interfere at all with his exit, we already knew he was headed out. We returned to where we had originally been, and within minutes both the resident alpha male and the alpha female rushed over close to where that intruder had been. And they too, faced the direction where they had been howling from, never actually going to the intruder’s exact spot. I suppose they will discover and explore that later. Probably their strong olfactory equipment had already let them know that the intruder had departed. They did not try to pursue him: it’s to coyote’s benefit not to engage in a fight which might injure them enough to prevent survival.
Mom and Dad rush over (top two photos) and remained in an anxious state of alert (bottom photo). Possibly they were keeping their eyes on where they knew the pups were.
After the very palpable bulk of tension had subsided, the alpha male wandered to the family’s rendezvous spot, but a youngster there must have sensed the tension because he remained on his back even though his dad was a substantial distance away. I suppose the family will be on higher alert for the next little while.
I’ve seen a number of intruders throughout San Francisco in the 16+ years I’ve been observing, and in each, something what I saw was a little different. I’ve seen an intruder simply turn and leave shortly after coming into a foreign territory and finding out what the situation was by sniffing — the resident family, as far as I could tell, did not even know he was there, though they probably sniffed his presence at a later time. And I’ve also watched territorial claimants hotly pursue intruders and even viciously attack in their effort to get that intruder to leave.
This time, we heard an intruder react to territorial vocalizations by quietly leaving, and the family react anxiously. Maybe the family saw him leave and knew he wouldn’t be coming back — there’s no reason for a fight here. Fighting happens only when one side won’t back down: you might recall Scout’s plight [search *Scout* if you are interested]. Other examples of intrusions can be found by typing in *intruder* into the blog’s search box.
Pup remains in his most submissive position as he reads Dad’s state of mind before he even gets near to the youngster!
The Intruder today looked like he was 2 or 3 years old — he would have been looking for a territory and a mate. Just like for humans, life’s various transitions for some coyotes are smooth and seamless, and for others there is much more effort and uncertainty as they search for openings and opportunities to improve their situations, and ultimately find themselves. I think this is a good way to look at their lives: as very parallel to our own.
Lapis is a six month old pup born this year with one blue eye (the right eye) and one brown eye. She’s a beautiful if unusual coyote with slightly lighter fur than her siblings!
Apparently, blue occurs when there is a lack or reduction of melanin. Melanin produces brown eyes. This phenomenon occurs either due to genetic reasons or if there has been an eye injury.
At this point, I’m wondering if more could be going on than just a genetic color difference. There could have been an injury OR it might be that blue eyes have different anatomical properties than brown eyes in animals. In humans, for instance myself, blue eyes happen to be more sensitive to light than brown eyes — so there must be some, even if minor, anatomical difference. If blue eyes are more sensitive to light, I wondered if blue eyes see better at night than brown eyes. A Google search informed me that human blue eyes are more sensitive to light during the day, and by the same token, people with blue eyes tend to see better at night, unless there are bright lights. In other words, blue eyes allow more light into the retina. Wouldn’t this same physiology also pertain to animals? Biologist Carl Safina has pointed out that animals and humans actually have the same types of cells.
I ask this because Lapis appeared in one of my field infrared-lit cameras one night. See video below. Interestingly, her blue eye isn’t reflecting the light as well/as much as the other eye, in fact, the reflecting part seems to be a smaller circle of light than the brown eye, limited to the center of the eye. What is involved in the reflecting eyes is the tapetum.
The tapetum lucidum (Latin for “shining layer”) is the reflective surface in the back of the retina in some animals. It basically helps these animals see super-well at night by re-using the little light there is to maintain sharpness and contrast of an image on the retina — in other words, it increases the quantity of light passing through the retina by as much as 44%. It is also what causes the glowing eye phenomenon known as “eyeshine” which can be seen in night-vision cameras or when a flashlight is used. I see it in my nighttime infrared lit cameras. When there is an injury to the eye, this tapetum lucidum does not reflect the light — in fact, the animal looks like it has only one eye in the night vision cameras..
So there’s either a problem with the eye, such as an injury, OR blue eyes don’t form a fully reflecting tapetum surface because that would let in too much light. I’m coming to this conclusion based on this one case and offering it as food for thought and hoping for more input from other observers.
Further interesting reading on blue eyes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any articles on the quality of tapetum surfaces in blue eyes.
A raccoon with an eye injury: only the good eye reflects infrared light.
Piano played at dusk in the out of doors in Golden Gate Park[internet photo]
“I was playing the piano by Conservatory of Flowers and coyotes started singing along. Wait til the end, its my favorite part”: Ash Temeña [Reposted with permission]
(an audio only video)
Of course, coyotes routinely respond to sirens, so their response to the piano would be a similar type of response. Responses to sirens can vary tremendously, from the mellow howling you heard above as they howled along with the piano, to much more high-pitched, short yips as you can hear below. And because I was less than 100 feet away, this recording has quite a different quality to it. If you listen right to the end, you’ll hear a short bark by Dad which actually puts a stop to the howling: Dad is controlling the situation. But several short growls followed that which are barely audible: these are continued vocalizations by Dad with two of his youngsters who were present with him: a two-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter.
To listen to more types of vocalizations and their circumstances, press here.
In case you haven’t seen one, here is a family rendezvous that consists almost entirely of mutual grooming.
The family here includes Mom, Dad, a one-year-old yearling, and a two-year-old yearling. I’ve seen the young pups born this year, but they have not been part of the nightly rendezvous yet in this location because they’ve been raised some distance away due to disruptive dogs here: so the rendezvous at this location consists only of the adults to date. The adults in most families sleep during daylight hours away from the pups. The pups would be five months old in this video — they will have attained a pretty good size by now. After the rendezvous here, these adults then go trekking into the distance beyond the safety of this park where they meet up with the youngsters. Please remember that each family is different — this situation with pups ensconced further away is different from what I normally see.
The reason I’ve posted this video is to show how much grooming is going on between each of the individuals: this amount of grooming, in fact, is quite normal. I’ve broken it down in italics below if you want to know who is grooming whom. Basically, the yearlings groom each other, everyone grooms Mom. . . . . Knowing who is who is unnecessary for appreciating the mutual grooming, but If you want to know who is who, here is the breakdown.
Video begins with two year old son to the left; one year old daughter, Dad, and then Mom to the right: Son begins grooming Sister and then both youngsters groom Dad with Daughter moving over to the right at about :42.
At :52 Son and Daughter groom Dad with mom in the background. At about 1:00 Daughter begins grooming Mom.
At 1:05 Son reaches between Mom and Dad to groom Daughter on the right as Daughter grooms Mom and Dad looks at us.
At 1:34 Son stops to scratch himself and Daughter continues to groom Mom and then grooms Dad as the video ends.
Grooming serves multiple purposes: to get rid of bugs, it confirm ranks and it strengthen bonds. The grooming went on for about 20 minutes — this is just a short section of that session over a month ago (8/25)
I’ve looked back at the photos I have of Teardrop and her siblings. Only a month ago she was thriving. She was small and she had something wrong with her eyes which were constantly tearing up, but otherwise she had a little round body just like the rest of her siblings. Behaviorally, she tended to keep to herself more than the others: I attributed this to her small size. Rough play was the order of the day and it seemed this was too much for her.
I posted her situation and a long video on September 16th. For that video, she had plopped herself down right in front of the camera as though she wanted her story to be known. Before that video, I had only been seeing her with IR at night which had not revealed the extent of her illness and emaciation.
Above is a series of videos I was able to capture during her last day.
And then it happened — I found her body. Her death, in my opinion, was a release — a release from the pain and discomfort her little body had to cope with due to an illness which was not of her choice nor of her making. Pup survival rate in the wild is not high. The videos, all taken within the last week, show she was in pain and withering away — she needed to be relieved of that.
Nature, even without humans around to make it worse, is not always pretty: it’s brutal, messy, and dirty. We tend to think of *nature* and what is *natural* as being good, pure, pristine and calm — but is it? Wild animals are always hungry, and they don’t know where the next meal is coming from or even if there will be a next meal. They are constantly plagued by bugs, sores, dirt, the weather in all its forms, the environmental situation they find themselves in. There is no relief from the pain of physical injuries, be they from a thorn in a foot pad to an actual broken limb. And there are diseases including distemper, rabies, mange that are endemic to wildlife. Above what nature has dealt them, we humans often worsen their lives with our hate, fears, and even our love — including feeding and befriending them — all of which inform their behaviors and alter them, and in the end make life more difficult for them.
This is how I found the tiny 5 month old
After Teardrop’s death, and maybe even during her death, her family appeared in the field cameras. They had been around as individuals but not as a family before that, so I’m sure her dire situation is what attracted them. I’ve heard coyotes howl at the death of a family member, but my cameras are not triggered by sound, so I didn’t hear it if it happened. I don’t know if her family tried to help her, but I know that one of her brothers hung around, possibly not comprehending her death, her stillness, or her new odors that came with death — or maybe he was waiting for her. He waited around longer than the others and even came back and sat above where I found her.
Video of her family dealing with her death
I didn’t catch the situation until less than a week ago. I immediately called my wildlife vet who told me that, if the emaciation wasn’t caused by a systemic illness such as kidney disease which can’t be helped, it could be due to bad hunting skills. This struck a bell with me because I had observed since her birth that her eyes were always watery and she was constantly rubbing them. Over the last month — which is the timeframe when the emaciation took hold and progressed — parent coyotes were pushing and encouraging their youngsters to hunt more and more on their own by not bringing them food: “hey, if you want to eat, you’ll have to hunt.” It’s an act of love and kindness to push them to become self-sufficient, even though it might hurt a little. But without excellent eyes, maybe this was impossible.
Could we have captured her and fixed her, or sent her to a sanctuary? The answer in balance and realistically is no: there were too many negatives and no guarantees of success in this case. In the first place, we would have made life terrifyingly worse by trying to capture her: removing the youngster from the only family situation and life she has known is bad, even if you’re trying to save her life. As for a sanctuary: life without freedom and concomitant elements of a natural life is not much of a life. Their natural lives include exciting life cycle milestones such as dispersing, looking for a territory, finding a mate, defending that territory, raising a family and developing individual relationships with family members, feeding that family. A wild coyote’s life that doesn’t include these things, or the potential for these things, is a compromised life that I don’t believe they would want to live.
As I said, she was extra small from birth and had problems with her eyes from that time on, so she appears to have been born with a weak system right from the start. Again, coyote pup survival rate is not high.
It’s been at the berries, rodents and grasshoppers. And so has its family.
[I responded asking if this could be sent to the ranchers who were complaining]
This has been done and they followed up with trail cams in different spots. (Not a light decision..the bears often damage the cameras. Expensive.)
They did find a coyote with prey…a feral cat. (That’s another plus…for the local songbirds and quail) No coyote seen outside sheep pastures…but two neighbor dogs were. (From over mile away and both times between 10 pm-1am. )
So scat scouting really is needed to confirm coyote predation or to pin point what really is going on.
In this case, dogs freed at night were the prime suspects, not the local coyote pair.
Walkaboutlou sent me a link to the above article and then the statement below, revealing a much more complicated and convoluted issue with concomitant repercussions than first meets the eye:
Hi Janet.
I sent a decision made in Oregon today concerning coyote hunting contests. However…its concerning because it only covers public lands. Private lands can still hold these events.
It also is dividing because lack of discourse means whole groups of community didnt bother to bring their views.
Which means whole communities will politicize coyote and most certainly make these “contests” a way to express their displeasure at government.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a resurgence of hate and re-channeled angst aimed at an animal in my life.
It’s a societal stressed reaction much like witch burnings of old.
Last few months Ive been asked not to return for property patrols 4 places..simply for voicing the need for proactively setting safeguards in place for livestock and minimizing coyote and wolf conflict.
I’m learning…some want conflict. They want excuses to hunt every predator in land. And they practice that belief legally or otherwise.
At any rate, this legal decision is a start. But something far greater needs to be reached.
Warped and nearly superstitious views of predators is often the regional norm and combined with implacable hatred of coyote and government…it really is complex.
Its more then coyote. Its what they could symbolize. Tolerance. New Views. And accepting those.
Lou
Hi Lou —
OMG! So it’s now turned around and even more polarized than before. Your comments above give huge insights and I’d like to post them. May I? I would post with the link you sent me.
This kind of knee-jerk reaction happened before, where people who thought they were helping the coyotes were actually harming them. When those supporting banned leg-hold traps, they didn’t know they would be increasing the use of snares, which are far, far more insidious than leg-hold traps.
[Those who hate don’t want to be stopped]. And humans justify their hate and hateful actions through rationalizations. The story is [sad].
Let me know! And thank you for sending!
Janet
Hi Janet,
Yes you can. The thing is…and I say this via a blanket question I ask myself…for everything in my life…”What if I’m wrong?” Or at least..not as informed as I thought? I recently had a tense conversation with a long associate who also has ranch. Talking about wolves appearing and the ever appearing coyote..he said “my family and neighbors have been killing coyote for over 110 years here. And we’re not gonna stop” I calmly countered…well…that means it hasn’t really worked out has it?”
I won’t type his reply. But I can sense..for one..its residual traditions and a belief system and social pressure. Its a form of identity. Killing every coyote seen is seen as a community service, good sport and social responsibility in many areas. Also..even when presented with solutions those solutions aren’t usually wanted by traditionalists. Assembling and creating a pack of LGD, fenced lambing areas and allowing coyote to naturally form long lasting territorial pairs really is seen as expensive, crazy proposals.
But over and over, we’ve seen it work. A well kept group of LGD with serious fencing and daily presence of people is what is needed.
Minimizing predation on livestock keeps coyote very manageable. Wiping out whole packs and disruption of territory only creates footloose rather nomadic super predators every herder dreads. But that kind of predation is man caused.
At any rate…I think my views are different because the local headlines tout the new laws as a “win”. But just because someone has come out goal met..doesn’t mean they won.
It’s a 1st step. But by alienating many who live on ranges..its insured even greater hostility toward coyote. Who are the symbolic scapegoat for all predators.
One of my comforts is..I know Coyote. They don’t care about laws or lack of laws. And they will keep countering and winning every persecution aimed at them. A lot are lost. Many more return. They’ve been underdog before a human ever set foot here. And remain defiant and more numerous than ever.
This ten minute video might seem long by today’s 2-minute standard. Although I’ve actually cut it by half, I’ve incorporated the entirety of what the field camera captured except the long sleeping sections.
I spend hours out in nature, waiting to see the coyotes I know, and then waiting for something to happen, as it often appears that nothing at all is really going on. But of course, something is always going on, and I can figure it out if I really look for it. In this video it appears that almost nothing is going on, but in fact there’s a wrenching story.
This is a five-month-old coyote pup. At five months, developing coyotes are becoming what we might call *teenagers*, unless something is preventing that from happening. Teardrop is one of Scout’s pups born this year — one of seven pups and the smallest. In addition, right from the start I noticed her constantly wet and oozing eyes, indicating that her immune system was not up to par. So she has been challenged right from the start.
I hadn’t seen her in months and thought she might no longer be around, but then several days ago she passed by one of my field cameras, and then, magically, as if she herself wanted to share her story, she spent time right in front of another of my cameras. I’m sharing that 20 minutes (reduced to 10 minutes) here.
In the video, Teardrop approaches one of the numerous dens dug by her parents but which were never used. Until this day, neither parents nor pups had ever entered this den, though they passed it occasionally and sniffed around. I had a camera there *just in case*. Coyote parents dig numerous dens to have them ready if they are needed, say due to flea buildup or a sudden danger, but few of these are actually used.
This particular den was dug when the pups were already two months old — not before they were born! — and HERE is a video of this den being built back in June.
Since this den had not been used, of course I was surprised that suddenly was, even if not for very long. Teardrop enters the den and remains in there, emerging a full hour later. The thing to notice is how emaciated, frail, and feeble she is. I don’t have images of her next to her siblings, but here is a healthy brother of hers on the left, she is in the middle photo. To the right is her as a much younger pup.
Bolder (brother) to the left; Teardrop a few days ago in the middle; Teardrop as a small pup to the right.
I’ve put captions in the video, pointing out what is going on. I wrote my wildlife vet and asked what, if anything, could be done to help. For instance, if this were a case of parasites or worms possibly we could intervene.
UPDATE: Her response was negative: “Most worms don’t cause severe emaciation- I would think more like not hunting well, or some other more severe problem- like kidney disease or other digestive malformation. Sadly that is not going to get better just with a deworming medication.”
I’m now thinking that the watery eyes, and the way they look in the video, may indicate a problem with seeing which would lead to not hunting well, as the vet suggested. I don’t think this is something we can intervene for. If there is a Part II to this story, I will post it, but it’s bound to be a sad one.
Displaying testy behavior towards a sibling: hackles up, grimace, teeth displayed
In coyotes, “etiquette” — the customary code of polite behaviors among members of a group –is slowly absorbed through constant sibling and parental interactions.
In human terms, this might include not bumping the next person, not interrupting them, not hitting, not grabbing their stuff, not crowding them. And, of course, there are different degrees of what is and what is not acceptable, with sometimes just a fine line separating the one from the other. And then there’s teasing and joking that allow crossing the line “in fun”. “Rules” are all geared to respect personal space and boundaries and to prevent a defensive or antagonistic reaction. On the receiving end of another’s behavior, there are also degrees of acceptance: from returning the respect, removing oneself from a less-than polite encounter, to warnings and to all-out retaliation in kind or more. The same seems to hold for coyotes.
At 4 months:wrestling, play-biting, testing, oneupmanship is all for fun and has no meaning behind it.
With coyote pups, back even just a month ago, tugging, chewing on, tackling, pinning were all behaviors pulled out of the toybox with no real underlying meaning except for the fun of it all. Early pup interactive behavior consisted of back and forth bantering and reactions which were innocent and fun. Here, above, is a series of photos showing the fun: pell mell, tumble bumble, catch me if you can, gotcha! behavior.
By five months of age I’ve noticed a qualitative change injected into this play. Now their behavior towards each other can be testy, seemingly coming from a developing sense of personal boundaries and resulting in standing up for oneself. There is less tolerance for perpetual pushy, dominating, or too rough play.
Below are photos showing five-month-old coyote pups reacting to each other’s perceived intrusions, with warnings of various sorts. It’s not particularly intense yet at this stage, but from their gazes and expressions, you can see that there are negative feelings and an “I mean it” behind a lot of their actions now. Their actions and reactions have growing meaning for themselves and their relationships with their siblings.
At five months, there is now a qualitative difference in their play: they respond with resentment and anger to unwanted intrusiveness from another sibling.
Photos: First row, a second youngster is interested/curious about the first youngster’s focused activity. First coyote decides to quelch any intentions that second coyote has about intruding on him and stealing his find: he firmly grabs the newcomer’s snout in a perfunctory manner, telling him “no” in a much milder manner than his parents have. The *message* then continued with another perfunctory back grab to the intruder coyote: the underdog first coyote has his say about it.Of interest here, the intruding coyote remained totally chilled with this treatment — “ho hum” about it. Within seconds all seemed forgotten — but it’s never entirely forgotten and these episodes add up, just like with humans.
Middle row, notice the antagonistic facial communication. In the first photo, again there is an intruder and the first coyote is warning him off with a snarl and bared teeth: there’s something in the bushes he wants and has claimed as a second youngster shows interest in taking over. In the middle photo there’s a glare of “you’ve crossed the line” at a sibling’s body slam; and in the third photo a youngster pulls back his lips, backing away from an intruding brother who he doesn’t want to deal with.
In the bottom row you’ll see a bullying sibling dominating and pinning down a sibling, hackles up in anger at being resisted. In the second photo, a sibling lashes out intensely with bared teeth and a lunge — a sibling has crossed the personal boundary line. And lastly a bullied youngster bends over with hackles up, teeth bared, and tongue out, showing intense displeasure with being ganged up on by two brothers.
So, they are now pushing their boundaries and pushing back in order to stand up for themselves.
In past litters, I’ve seen antagonisms grow and lead to dispersals. But I’ve also seen avoidance to divert an antagonism. Siblings end up pairing up with like-energy and like-dispositions for play purposes. I’ve also seen reversal of antagonisms. They are writing their stories as they go along!
By the way, parents don’t interfere in sibling relations — siblings are left to work these out by themselves. That is . . . . until dispersal time when dominating behavior of a lingering male may be slammed down by a parent when a parent is present, even if the dominating behavior was part of play.
Last October, SF forced out each of his littermate siblings by repeatedly slamming each of them to the ground and standing over them intimidatingly, including bites, pinches and punches, in essence, pushing them out of the nest, not unlike Cuckoo birds that do the same thing.
SF is now two-and-a-half-years old. Last year, at just over 1-1/2 years of age, he drove all of his littermates out of the family territory, forcing their dispersal — there were four of them — all were males. This is, of course, normal and natural coyote developmental behavior. Most dispersals that I’ve seen have been prodded on by a rivalrous sibling rather than a parent. Last year, his parents produced a subsequent litter of three. The two males have left, probably also driven out by SF: I was not around to catch the dynamics of their departures. One female from that litter, Bibs — 1-1/2 years old now — remains. These two — SF and Bibs — have become charmed buddies, and remain on their natal territory, along with their parents and another new litter born this year.
Dad no longer feels the same way as his daughter about this lingering son of his, after all, two and a half years is longer than most youngsters remain before dispersing. And on top of this, probably unbeknownst to him, it’s not actually his biological son, but his step-son. Yes, coyote families have the same complicated relationships that we have — even more so since inbreeding is quite normal for them. But I highly doubt that Dad understands that this son is not his: the son was, after all, raised as his own and I saw all the affection and care proffered on the son as though they were directly related; he was, in fact, the behavioral and situational dad. But above this they ARE related in all sorts of ways through the alpha female, who is Dad’s mother, sister, and now his mate, and SF is Dad’s half-sibling.. As I stated earlier, there is plenty of inbreeding in some coyote families. It can be confusing and reminds me of an SAT question long ago, something like, “A family consists of 6 members P, Q , R, X, Y, Z. Q is the son of R but R is not mother of Q. P and R are married couple. Y is the brother of R, X is the daughter of P. Z is the brother of P. How many female members are there in the family?” I’m sure many of you remember this type of question!
Recent domination by Dad of two-and-a-half year old son, SF, with one-year-old daughter standing on the left
This developing antagonistic Dad/Son relationship can be seen at their recent rendezvous greetings — see above photo. It is now Son who must kowtow and lie on his back for long stretches of time while his Dad stands dominatingly and provokingly over him — just like he did to his littermates. Not until Dad is totally satisfied with attaining Son’s absolute submissive response — no flinching, no struggling, no show of displeasure — does Dad release his physical and psychological hold, allowing SF to slip out from under him if he does so calmly.
In addition, in front of Dad, Son can never be confrontational with his younger sister, so it’s almost a *forced* ranking: he’ll get knocked down by dad for snarling at her, AND for showing too much interest in her. To curb son’s attention towards his sister, Dad weaves himself between them when he greets the two of them — see video below. In other words, Dad wants control and it appears that he’s is getting ready to drive Son out. Boomerang: what goes around, comes around.
By the way, daughter’s response to SF is always very warm and affectionate. I’ve seen her only a couple of times display the oneupmanship that goes along with privileged rank: putting her paws on him. She’s not into dominating him at all and actually starts grooming Dad to get him to stop his dominating behavior towards SF.
Video showing a recent rendezvous greeting between Dad, his two-year-old son, and his one-year-old daughter.
About My Site and Me: This website reflects my 17 years of intense, careful, and dedicated field-work — empirical observations — all photo-documented without interfering or changing coyotes’ behaviors. Be welcome here, enjoy, and learn!
Coyotes reappeared in San Francisco in 2002 after many years of absence, and people are still in the dark about them. This site is to help bring light to their behavior and offer simple guidelines for easy coexistence.
My information comes from my own first-hand observations of our very own coyotes here in San Francisco. They have not been studied or observed so thoroughly by anyone else. Mine is not generic information, nor second-hand.
Note that none of the coyotes I document and photograph is “anonymous” to me: I know (or knew) each one of them, and can tell you about their personalities, histories, and their family situations. There have been over 100 of them, distributed among over twenty families, all in San Francisco. Images and true stories have the power to raise awareness and change perspective.
Coyote Yipps 