8/3/2023 0 Comments Coyote predatorsThere can be alarm calls, multiple eyes and ears looking out, and when you have a group of coyotes, you’ve got some benefit in defense against first identification of a cougar and defense against.” ![]() “Coyotes are very vigilant” at kill sites, says Taal Levi, a professor at Oregon State University, who co-authored the recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s possible, researchers say, that when coyotes know they’re somewhere risky, they stay on higher alert. The Wyoming and Oregon researchers found that while mountain lion kills made a substantial portion of a coyote’s diet, the coyotes weren’t disproportionately more likely to die while feeding at a fresh site. ![]() Radio collar data showed coyotes stayed away from areas with trees and rocks that help mountain lions hunt, unless they smelled or otherwise sensed food, say researcher Mitchell Brunet, who authored a paper published recently in Ecology and Evolution. Nearby, in the sagebrush and juniper mountainsides of Wyoming, researchers found that coyotes generally avoided areas where lions live. Meanwhile, bobcats cared little for lions or their food. The results showed that black bears avoided cougars and infrequently visited kill sites. In the PNAS study, researchers collared coyotes, cougars, black bears, and bobcats, and put trail cameras on kill sites to see what animals visited and to track their movements. ( Learn more: Coyotes have expanded their range to 49 states-and beyond.) They’re clever, good at reproducing, and adaptable, and they’re often most willing to take risks for food. They range from Alaska to Panama, and possibly even farther south. Why all this focus on coyotes? They’re among the biggest players in North America’s mesocarnivore population. “So maybe these kill sites are not actually just a free meal,” she says. But she also found the risk of coyotes being killed by wolves went up. She found coyotes lingered in areas with wolf packs to sneak a chance at their kills. But when snowshoe hare numbers crashed in her study area, and coyotes began scavenging much more on wolf kills, she wondered if mesocarnivores might actually benefit from having apex predators around.Īnd they did benefit-kind of. Prevailing thought held that apex predators kept smaller predators in check. Prugh stumbled on the phenomenon she calls “fatal attraction” when studying gray wolves in central Alaska. “None of their actions are independent of each other.” A carnivore’s calculation Wolves affect coyotes and coyotes affect wolves,” says Kevin Monteith, a researcher at the University of Wyoming. These papers consistently note that trying to remove one carnivore from a landscape, or encourage another to return, will likely result in difficult-to-predict consequences. This risk-taking, or what Prugh calls “enemies with benefits” plays out differently depending on the ecosystem and species involved. “It’s also possible, though, that they’re able to assess risk, say, based on how fresh the sign is of the large carnivores or by being more vigilant.” “It’s certainly possible that even though it’s risky, coyotes just can’t help themselves” to freshly-killed deer and the like, says Laura Prugh, a University of Washington professor who authored a 2020 paper in Ecology Letters that addresses these relationships. Meanwhile, stolen prey made up about 30 percent of the diet of these smaller predators, which include coyotes, bobcats, and black bears. ![]() Globally, large carnivores-including cougars and wolves-are responsible for about a third of all mesocarnivore deaths. This paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one in a series of recent studies showing the medium-sized carnivores often take such risks, much more than previously thought. Competition for prey may be the reason: The study found that elk meat-from animals killed by cougars-made up more than half of the coyote’s diet. ![]() Researchers in Oregon recently found that mountain lions killed about a quarter of all coyotes in one study area. But this risk-taking comes with a cost: It’s not uncommon for cougars to eat coyotes. New research shows that coyotes often try to steal or scavenge on prey killed by mountain lions, such as deer and elk. While these medium-sized meat-eaters, known as mesocarnivores, can be cagy around people, they take chances around large non-human predators. This has helped the wily critters recolonize much of their former habitat and spread into the fringes of human-dominated landscapes where they were previously absent. Coyotes are well-known for their adaptability and trickster ways.
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