Coyote

Canis latrans

Coyote

“ Actually, coyotes are much scarier than wolves. Sneaky, sneaky little suckers. Eat you up. Lick the blood all up. ”

– Laird Barron, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

Scientific Taxonomy & Character Information

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Clade: Synapsida

Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Family: Canidae

Genius: Canis

Species: Canis latrans

Descendants: Canis edwardii

Named by: Thomas Say

Year Published: 1823

Size: 33–47 pounds in weight; 3.5-4.5 feet in length; 58 – 66 cm tall in height

Lifespan: 8 to 80+ years

Type: 

Title: 

Pantheon: Terran/Gaian

Time Period: Pleistocene - Holocene

Alignment: Neutral

Threat Level: ★★★★

Diet: Omnivorous 🥩🌿

Elements: n/a

Inflicts: Gnashed

Weaknesses: Fire, electric, arcane, sound, light

Casualties: 

Based On: itself

Conservation Status: Least Concern (LC) – IUCN Red List 

The coyote (Canis latrans) is a species of canine native to North America. The coyote is larger and more predatory and was once referred to as the American jackal by a behavioral ecologist. Other historical names for the species include the prairie wolf, and the brush wolf.

Etymology

The coyote is one of the best species of canids or wild dogs. Its many names are from Native Indians of Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, and the United States of America. The first name was from the Nahuatl of Mexico and was called kōyōtl or cōyōtl in nativized and Hispanized orthography, respectively.


The first time it was used in English occurred in William Bullock's Six Months' Residence and Travels in Mexico (1824), where it is variously transcribed as cayjotte and cocyotie. The word's spelling was standardized as "coyote" by the 1880s, a followup to Spanish names for this canid rather than Anglicization.

Physical Appearance

The average male weighs 8 to 20 kg (18 to 44 lb), and the average female weighs 7 to 18 kg (15 to 40 lb). Their fur color is predominantly light gray and red, or fulvous, interspersed with black and white, though it varies somewhat with geography. Despite predation by gray wolves, coyotes sometimes mate with them and with eastern, or red, wolves, producing "coywolf" hybrids. In the northeastern regions of North America, the eastern coyote (a larger subspecies, though still smaller than wolves) is the result of various historical and recent matings with various types of wolves. Genetic studies show that most North American wolves contain some level of coyote DNA.


Coyotes living at high elevations tend to have more black and gray shades than their desert-dwelling counterparts, which are more fulvous or whitish-gray. The coyote's fur consists of short, soft underfur and long, coarse guard hairs. The fur of northern subspecies is longer and denser than in southern forms, with the fur of some Mexican and Central American forms being almost hispid (bristly). Generally, adult coyotes (including coywolf hybrids) have a sable coat color, a dark neonatal coat color, a bushy tail with an active supracaudal gland, and a white facial mask. Albinism is extremely rare in coyotes. Out of a total of 750,000 coyotes killed by federal and cooperative hunters between March 1938 and June 1945, only two were albinos.


The coyote is typically smaller than the gray wolf but has longer ears and a relatively larger braincase, as well as a thinner frame, face, and muzzle. The scent glands are smaller than the gray wolf's but are the same color. Its fur color variation is much less varied than that of a wolf. The coyote also carries its tail downward when running or walking, rather than horizontally as the wolf does.

Abilities

Coyote is very agile, faster, and can easily climb up and jump off walls and large rocks. It is agile enough to perform several attacks in a row using its fangs and forelimbs.


According to the University of Michigan, coyotes frequently howl in unison when returning to their pack after a hunt. These howls can be magnificent, but because their combined cries can be heard well into the night, they are a death sign. The ability of coyotes to exploit human resources allows them to occupy urban areas.

Ecology

Coyotes are opportunistic, generalist predators that eat a variety of food items, typically consuming items in relation to changes in availability. Coyotes eat foods ranging from fruit and insects to large ungulates and livestock. Livestock and wild ungulates may often be represented in coyote stomachs and scats as carrion, but predation on large ungulates (native, introduced and domestic) does occur.

Behavior

Generally speaking, coyotes pose no threat. When they are having pups, which is usually between May and September, they can be very territorial and protective. But in general, you shouldn't be afraid of them. A coyote attack is the term used when coyotes attack humans. These attacks are rare and rarely cause serious injuries, but they are happening more frequently now, especially in California.


If an attacker is not the pack dog's owner, is a member of the same team, or is eliminated in a single blow, the pack canid will turn hostile against the survivor or other creatures that attack it. Additionally, it makes all wolves hostile to the attacker, including wild and standing tamed wolves within a 70-kilometer radius around the assaulted canid. This facilitates coordinated attacks and team hunts.


A common figure in Native American folklore, particularly in Aridoamerican culture, is the coyote, who is typically portrayed as a cunning figure who alternatively takes on the appearance of a man or a real coyote. Like other trickster characters, the coyote challenges social norms by being cunning and funny. The animal was revered in Mesoamerican mythology particularly as a representation of strength in battle. It was viewed as a cowardly and unreliable animal in Anglo-American and Hispanic-American civilizations following European colonization of the Americas. In contrast to wolves, which enjoy a more favorable public perception, coyotes continue to face a predominantly bad image.

Behavior

Across their entire range, coyote populations are not currently under any serious threat. Temporary local reductions have been increasing in range. It has not been necessary to implement conservation measures to keep populations sustainable. Coyotes live in most ecosystems, including cities, and are adapted to human surroundings. There is evidence of hybridization between wolves and dogs, but this probably only happens at the front edges of growing populations. Low amounts of wolf and dog introgression are then dispersed across some new populations as a result of back-crossing into coyote populations.

Distribution and Habitat

Coyotes were originally native to the arid open country of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico prior to European settlement. During the 19th century, the Coyote expanded into forested biomes they previously hadn't used, including eastern deciduous forests, taiga forests of the north, temperate rainforests in the north-west, and tropical rainforests in the south. The fragmentation of forests with agriculture and the extinction of larger predators like the Grey Wolf and the jaguar are thought to have facilitated their expansion. Hybridization with dogs and wolves also played a role in their expansion eastward. Coyotes have now colonized all of North America except for polar areas and are approaching the border between Central and South America in the Darien region of Panama.


Almost every type of habitat is used by coyotes, including tropical, desert, alpine, prairie, and woodland environments. Coyotes can live in metropolitan areas because they can take advantage of human resources; their recent spread to eastern Panama has been linked to their usage of cow ranches and deforested areas. In some desert regions, coyote dispersal may be restricted by the availability of water.


Tamed

Coyotes can be tamed by feeding the carcass in non-alpha members. Coyotes were likely semidomesticated by various pre-Columbian cultures. Some 19th-century writers wrote of coyotes being kept in native villages in the Great Plains. The coyote is easily tamed as a pup, but can become destructive as an adult. Both full-blooded and hybrid coyotes can be playful and confiding with their owners, but are suspicious and shy of strangers, though coyotes being tractable enough to be used for practical purposes like retrieving and pointing have been recorded.

Lore

In Aztec mythology, the Teotl named Huehuecóyotl (Wewekóyotl; meaning "elder coyote"), the god of dance, music, and carnality, is depicted in several codices as a man with a coyote's head. He is sometimes depicted as a womanizer, responsible for bringing war into the world by seducing Xochiquetzal, the goddess of love. Epigrapher David H. Kelley argued that the god Quetzalcoatl owed its origins to pre-Aztec Uto-Aztecan mythological depictions of the coyote, which is portrayed as mankind's "Elder Brother," a creator, seducer, trickster, and culture hero linked to the morning star.


Coyote features as a trickster figure and skinwalker in the folktales of some Native Americans, notably several nations in the Southwestern and Plains regions, where he alternately assumes the form of an actual coyote or that of a man. As with other trickster figures, Coyote acts as a picaresque hero who rebels against social convention through deception and humor. Folklorists such as Harris believe coyotes came to be seen as tricksters due to the animal's intelligence and adaptability. After the European colonization of the Americas, Anglo-American and Hispanic-American depictions of Coyote are of a cowardly and untrustworthy animal.


Coyote is featured in the mythology of numerous peoples from the area covered by the modern state of California, including the Achomawi and Atsugewi, the Diegueños, the Gallinoméro, the Juaneño, the Karok, the Luiseño, the Maidu, the Miwok, the Pomo the Rumsen, the Shasta, the Sinkyone, the Wappo, the Yana and the Yokuts. In many of these stories he is a major sacred character with divine creative powers; in others he is a malevolent and often comical trickster. In some stories he combines both roles.


Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons, first appearing in 1949 in the theatrical cartoon short Fast and Furry-ous. 


On October 27, 2009, two eastern coyotes (coywolves) mauled 19-year-old singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell at Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia, Canada. Mitchelle was on a hiking break from her concert tour when they stalked and chased her down the Skyline Trail. An air ambulance airlifted her to a medical center, but she died a few hours later from severe injuries and blood loss.


On June 2018, a coyote in Mexicali assaulted a family that illegally kept it for a pet.

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Foreign Languages

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