60 Fun Facts About Coyote

What does the coyote's scientific name, Canis latrans, mean?

It has been called 'the most vocal of all wild North American mammals', with at least 11 distinct calls.

The word 'coyote' is a Spanish borrowing from which language?

The Aztec word was coyotl; the first published use came in Clavijero's Historia de México of 1780.

How many coyote subspecies are recognised?

Eastern ones are large and dark; the animals get paler and smaller westward and redder in Mexico and Central America.

How much does an average male coyote weigh?

Northern coyotes average about 18 kg and Mexican ones about 11.5 kg; the record, shot in Wyoming in 1937, was 34 kg.

How does the IUCN classify the coyote?

It is abundant across North America and still expanding its range, including into cities.

In 2013 the coyote was first recorded east of which waterway, raising fears of a push into South America?

Biologists worry it could cross into South America if the Darién Gap is ever bridged by the Pan-American Highway.

Which Eurasian animal fills roughly the same ecological niche as the coyote?

The coyote is generally the larger of the two.

What is a 'coywolf'?

Coyotes have never been known to mate with gray wolves in the wild, but they do with eastern and red wolves.

Roughly what share of the modern red wolf's genome is of coyote origin?

The red wolf likely arose when declining wolves in the Southeastern Woodlands were forced to hybridise with coyotes.

A coyote-dog hybrid is colloquially called what?

They are rare in the wild because the two species' breeding cycles do not line up and coyotes are usually hostile to dogs.

Black-coated coyotes owe their colour to a mutation that first arose in which animal?

A white (non-albino) coyote population in Newfoundland got its colour from a Golden Retriever gene.

Which dog breed passed a coat-colour gene to a population of white coyotes in Newfoundland?

The gene affects the melanocortin 1 receptor; true albinism is extremely rare in coyotes.

How does a running coyote carry its tail, unlike a wolf?

It also has longer ears, a relatively larger braincase and a thinner muzzle than the gray wolf.

Where did Meriwether Lewis describe the 'small wolf or burrowing dog of the prairies' in May 1805?

He noted its bark was 'precisely that of the small dog' and its eyes were 'a deep sea green'.

Who first scientifically described the coyote, in 1819, during Stephen Long's expedition?

He was working near Lewis and Clark's Council Bluffs with a copy of their journals in hand.

Unlike the wolf, what is the coyote's mating system?

That holds even where coyotes are dense and food is abundant; a female in heat may draw up to seven suitors, who leave once she chooses.

How long is a coyote's gestation?

The average litter is six pups, born blind and dependent on milk for their first ten days.

Coyotes often raise pups in the abandoned burrows of which animals?

Dens have turned up under homestead shacks, grain bins, drainage pipes and railroad tracks; a den may be reused for years.

How do coyote pups differ from wolf pups in their early behaviour?

By three weeks coyote pups bite each other with less inhibition than wolf pups; hierarchies are set by four or five weeks.

Which animal sometimes hunts alongside coyotes in a mutualistic partnership?

A Mexican jar from 1250-1300 CE depicts the pairing; some coyotes lay their heads on their badger partners.

How do experienced coyotes kill porcupines?

They often work in pairs; young coyotes trying it usually end up full of quills.

How do coyotes kill rattlesnakes near their dens?

They kill them mostly for food but also to protect pups.

Roughly what share of a coyote's diet is meat?

The rest includes strawberries, watermelons, peanuts, grass and even balsam fir leaves.

How much food does a coyote need each day, roughly?

That works out to about 250 kg a year; in winter it is mostly ungulate carcasses.

Coastal California coyotes eat more marine food than their ancestors, likely due to which animal's disappearance?

In Death Valley, they gorge on hawkmoth caterpillars in spring.

After wolves returned to Yellowstone in the 1990s, coyote numbers in the Lamar Valley fell by roughly how much?

Coyotes were wiped out entirely on Isle Royale after wolves arrived there in the 1940s.

Which two predators, after humans, are the coyote's greatest threats?

Cougars kill coyotes and sometimes do not even eat them, suggesting straightforward competition.

How far do coyotes typically walk in a day?

They often follow logging roads and paths and use iced-over rivers as winter highways.

In 2026 a coyote was found to have swum to which famous island, over a mile from the nearest land?

Coyotes are competent swimmers, reliably managing at least 0.8 km across water.

Why have urban coyotes become more nocturnal than their rural cousins?

Rural coyotes are mostly crepuscular, active around dusk and early night.

At least how many distinct vocalisations do adult coyotes make?

They fall into three groups: agonistic/alarm, greeting, and contact.

What is the coyote's 'wow-oo-wow' vocalisation described as?

The group yip howl marks reunions; the lone howl announces a coyote separated from its pack.

What did federal and cooperative hunters find among 750,000 coyotes killed between 1938 and 1945?

True albinism is extremely rare in the species.

Which two studies' finding surprised many about how coyotes and red foxes hunt?

The popular assumption had been that olfaction was everything.

In Native American folklore, Coyote is usually what kind of figure?

He alternates between animal and human form and rebels against convention through deception and humour.

In the Navajo (Dineh) story, why does Coyote bring death into the world?

In Zuni lore he brings winter by stealing light from the kachinas; the Crow call him Old Man Coyote, the Creator.

The Aztec god Huehuecóyotl, 'old coyote', was god of what?

He is depicted as a man with a coyote's head and blamed for bringing war by seducing the love goddess Xochiquetzal.

In which Mesoamerican city did the coyote symbolise military might?

The link to warrior cults persisted into Aztec times.

How many confirmed fatal coyote attacks on humans have there been?

Three-year-old Kelly Keen in Glendale, California, and singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell in Nova Scotia in 2009.

Coyotes were blamed for what share of the 224,000 US sheep deaths attributed to predators in 2004?

They are the most abundant livestock predator in western North America simply because there are so many of them.

Roughly how many coyotes do US government agents kill each year to protect livestock?

An Idaho census found an individual coyote was only 5% as likely to attack livestock as an individual wolf.

Coyotes see the world in what colours?

That is why hunters can get away with plain, open camouflage patterns.

Wile E. and the Road Runner first appeared in which 1949 cartoon?

Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese created them in 1948 as a parody of chase cartoons like Tom and Jerry.

Early model sheets identified Wile E. under what punning name, a nod to Cervantes?

A Looney Tunes comic later claimed the 'E' stands for Ethelbert.

From which fictional company does Wile E. Coyote mail-order most of his contraptions?

TV Guide put him on its 2013 list of the 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.

Who created Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner for Warner Bros. in 1948?

Maltese wrote the first 16 shorts and set the template for every chase.

Which musician voiced Homer's coyote spirit guide in The Simpsons?

Homer meets him after eating Guatemalan insanity peppers.

The famous 'oo-wee-oo-wee-oo' scream in the score of which 1966 western was inspired by a coyote howl?

Ennio Morricone's motif became one of the most recognisable in film.

The Coyote, inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2007, is the mascot of which NBA team?

He debuted in 1983; the NHL's Arizona Coyotes had 'Howler'.

Copper the coyote was one of three mascots for which Winter Olympics?

He shared duties with Powder the hare and Coal the bear.

Which state's flagship university fields athletic teams called the Coyotes?

The fictional West Canaan Coyotes were the football team in the 1999 film Varsity Blues.

A tame coyote named Butch appeared in the films Smoky (1946) and Ramrod (1947) before meeting what end?

Coyotes tame easily as pups but become destructive as adults.

Roughly when did the coyote's ancestor lineage, via Eucyon davisi, first appear in the fossil record?

Canis lepophagus followed around 5 million years ago and the coyote itself by about 1 million years ago.

Which of these is one of the coyote's alternative common names?

It is also called the brush wolf and the American jackal, and is smaller than both the gray wolf and the eastern wolf.

In which Canadian province was singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell killed by coyotes?

The only other confirmed fatal attack was on three-year-old Kelly Keen in Glendale, California.

Most of the 160-plus US coyote attacks in the 30 years to 2006 happened in which county?

Attacks rose from 41 in 1988-97 to 48 in the following period as suburbs pushed into coyote habitat.

In a Tohono O'odham flood story, Coyote helps which figure survive a global deluge?

Afterwards Coyote and Montezuma teach the newly created people how to live.

In Zuni lore, how does Coyote bring winter into the world?

The Maidu creation story is bleaker still, crediting Coyote with introducing work, suffering and death.

In one genomic study, the purest coyote specimen came from which country?

Coyotes from Alaska, California, Alabama and Quebec showed almost no wolf ancestry, while Missouri, Illinois and Florida animals had 5-10%.

How soon after the Quaternary extinction of their big prey did Pleistocene coyotes shrink in size?

Their teeth had been better suited to shearing meat; the vacant big-game niche of the dire wolf was quickly taken by gray wolves.