City and Country Coyotes: New Research Finds Increased Boldness in Urban Animals

Coyotes are natural scaredy cats, according to new nationwide research led by Julie Young from Utah State University’s Department of Wildland Resources. Their fear of all things new is an ingrained behavior that helps them avoid trouble and ultimately survive. But animals in urban areas tend to be a bit more bold than their country cousins.

The collaborative project included 16 research teams from across the country. The work showed that coyotes in urban areas reacted slightly more boldly when facing an unfamiliar object — in this case, wooden posts tied with plastic ribbon.

Using camera traps and scent lures, the researchers documented animals in rural neighborhoods spending more time in object-vigilant behaviors like crouching, tail-tucking or flinching. Urban coyotes were more willing to approach new objects and got closer to them. They spent more time in natural, relaxed actions like shaking, rolling, grooming and stretching.

Urban coyotes in the Western U.S. tended to be the boldest of the bunch, but there was remarkable uniformity in the results across the country, from New York to Los Angeles.

These differences in behavior may be tied to the risks and opportunities from their respective environments, say the authors. Urban coyotes have more opportunities for novelties, a chance to learn, adapt and to become desensitized to them.

One of the biggest risks for coyotes in rural landscapes is hunting and trapping by humans. In urban landscapes, the same curiosity that might get country coyotes killed leads to opportunities for food and other rewards.

“It’s an important insight into how wildlife adapts to the humans around them,” Young said. “Understanding and documenting these kinds of behaviors helps the folks who manage wildlife know how they might behave and why. It helps us better coexist with them.”

Coyote behavior can sometimes become problematic in places with pets, small children and livestock. But their similar responses across the country mean that successful deterrents developed for one region may be universally useful, Young said. Since fear of new things is an ingrained behavior, management tools that trigger this fear are likely to remain effective across different regions.

Established strategies for keeping coyotes at bay include removing trash, pet food and fallen fruit from yards, and using motion-activated lights or sprinklers. Some people also use ammonia-soaked rags, strobe lights or coyote-proof fencing.

This new research also demonstrates the effectiveness of a large, collaborative approach to understanding broad-scale patterns in animal behavior, according to the authors. The project was one of the largest carnivore behavior experiments to date. Such collaborations have the potential to effectively identify generalized patterns across an entire species' range, allowing researchers to learn more without having to repeat work again and again on their own, Young said.

Young is an associate professor and director of the Berryman Institute of Wildlife Damage Management at USU. The project was completed in collaboration with study leaders Stewart Breck at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center and Roland Kays at North Carolina State University, along with the collaboration of several other faculty and students at other universities and research agencies.