If you’ve noticed an uptick in coyote chatter recently in neighborhood groups, you’re not alone. February is mating season for the four-legged canines, which can lead to sightings in even the most urban parts of Central Indiana.
This time of year, coyotes spend much of their time surveying the boundaries of their territory, marking it and watching for any intruders. What’s normal mating behavior for coyotes, however, can look ominous to humans, especially those who own cats or small dogs.
Some urban coyotes indeed have been the culprits behind missing pets or injured livestock — incidents which have contributed to their bad reputation.
Nevertheless, coyotes play an under appreciated role in the urban ecosystem, experts emphasize.
Coyotes can clean up food waste, manage animal populations and even indirectly help influence native plant growth. Some coyote experts in Indiana believe that if humans can learn to live alongside the creatures, both man and canine might be safer in the long run.
Living alongside urban wildlife
A lot of people think the best course of action would be to move coyotes moved back into nature where they think coyotes belong, said Geriann Albers, a wildlife biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
“But they do belong here, actually,” she said. “Urban areas are still nature, and they’re still really great habitat for coyotes.”
Coyotes are native to North America, and live across most of the continent, from the desert scrub of Mexico to the tundras of central Alaska. The adaptable creatures thrive in urban and rural environments, and their range has expanded dramatically since 1900 — unlike other North American apex predators like wolves and bears, creatures with which humans have also struggled to share space with.
But coyotes excel at living near humans, even if most city-dwellers don’t realize it. Research into urban coyotes has helped illuminate how the creatures are positively impacted by city living: Urban coyotes tend to live longer, more densely and more nocturnally than their country cousins.
Even in cities like Indianapolis, coyotes have settled in just fine. Coyotes make homes in tiny green spaces across cities like small patches of forest, golf courses or cemeteries. They can find a place to raise their pups by digging up the underbelly of a back porch, an old tree stump or an abandoned skunk burrow.
And while some research shows that coyotes prefer wild food like rodents and berries, they are able to eat almost anything.
“They’re really good at living in urban areas, but people don’t expect them to be there,” Albers said. “So there’s kind of this mental disconnect.”
The shock of seeing a coyote in a city can quickly dissolve into fear for many urbanites.
“When people look at a coyote, they see a wolf and they see a potential threat,” Albers added.
Most of the time, a coyote sighting is not a cause for alarm. Researchers think urban coyotes are largely nocturnal in order to avoid humans. And given how ubiquitous coyotes are across the Indianapolis cityscape, Albers thinks the number of coyote incidents reported is shockingly low.
Rarely urban coyotes will attack pets, like small dogs and cats. Albers said that if a dog wanders too close to a coyote den during puppy season and a territorial adult coyote is at home, the encounter may not end well for the house pet.
She said these situations are rare, but pet owners should see to it their pets are safe. The DNR has several recommendations for avoiding coyote-pet interactions, mainly not leaving out food or water that could lure the wild animals.
There are times that people who spot a coyote near their homes should be wary.
“If you’re seeing it a lot during the day, it doesn’t seem to be scared of people, maybe it’s acting kind of aggressively towards you, barking, or things like that. That’s a problem,” said Brian MacGowan, a wildlife extension specialist at Purdue University. “That’s just simply not normal coyote behavior.”
Often, abnormal coyote interactions occur as the animals become more comfortable with humans, MacGowan said.
“If we don’t feed coyotes and we don’t habituate them, they’re going to be safer,” he added. “We’re going to be safer.”
Most of the time, however, coyotes are surprisingly good urban neighbors.
Coyotes have versatile palettes and fortified digestive systems. They can eat just about anything from fresh berries to deer carcasses. Their penchant for small mammals helps keep rodent, rabbit and wild geese populations in check. Because coyotes eat carrion, or dead meat, they help tackle food waste issues that might otherwise lead to disease spread.
Coyotes are particularly fond of squirrels, providing an important population management service in urban environments where the bushy-tailed rodents can chew through cables and wires. Coyotes also manage urban deer populations — a critical ecosystem function because ballooning deer herds can decimate forests, stunt plant growth and contribute to invasive species influxes.
In a city, where these food sources are abundant, it is “good living for a coyote,” Albers said.
This article was written by IndyStar reporter Sophie Hartley.