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How Coyotes Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello Vancouver, Hello Portland's we're going to be in your
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: city's Sunday, March twenty nine, Monday, March Chuck, that's right,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and this is Portland, Oregon. Since we've been to Portland, Maine.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We need to specify now, Oh yeah, that's right. But
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: they'd be weird to go from Vancouver to Portland, Maine.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, we can't wait. We've been to both these towns.
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  Speaker 1: including where to buy tickets at s y s K
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  Speaker 1: live dot com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's your
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: other host, Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There, there's Jerry Roland
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and our producer. This is Stuff you Should Know Coyote edition.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: So how are we going to pronounce it? I mean,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: it's coyote, but coyote's kind of fun, but you could
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: also pronounce it coyote coyote. There's a lot of ways. Yeah,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: so I say coyote, but I don't think that that's
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: technically correct eating it's coyote. Maybe yet I think it's
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: just swallowed my tongue. Uh. There's a lot of good
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: band names in here, by the way, I noticed. Oh yeah,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: i'll call them all out. Well, I'll call out the
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: first one right away. Genus Canus. It's pretty good, okay. Uh,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that is the where coyotes are members of the genus Canus. Yeah,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and Canus includes all dogs, Yeah, jackals, dogs, wolves, uh,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and dogs. That's why I said dogs. I know, but
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: there's so many great dogs that you just gotta say
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: it twice. Well, I don't want to short change the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: jackals of the world. Who likes jackals? Nobody likes jackals.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: That's right, you know, screw them right, say them once.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, let's go back and beep
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: out the second time we said that name. But hey,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: one thing about this about family candidate, which all dogs
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: belong to. It's a really old um family and it's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: native to North America. So like all those jackals, if
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about them some more, that made
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: it outside of North America. They started here they didn't
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: come from anywhere else, started in North America. Coyotes as
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: North American as apple Pie and Granny and Baseball and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: dogs and Dogs. We've done a lot of episodes that
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: are dog related over the years, and I still haven't
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: knocked out the one that I really want to do,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: which is the the first Dog, like the first domesticated dog.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: That'd be a good one. They made that movie, but
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it had any truth to it whatsoever.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Train Spotty. When that stuff happens, do you just say
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the first thing that came into your head? No, the
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: first thing that came into my head was never cry Wolf.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But I was like, that makes too much. I remember
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: that movie that, Yeah, that was a good one. That
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: was when we were kids, right Disney. It was a
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Disney jam, but I think it was like a little
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: but it's scarier. Is there's something about it that made
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: it like groundbreaking for Disney. I don't remember what it was, Yeah,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I remember too. Uh. And then that that terrible looking
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Call of the Wild Thing is out? Now, why can't
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: anybody stuff? Man? It's driving me crazy. Have you seen
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: these spectrum ads with Ellen degenerous on them? Apparently they're
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: just using c G I, Ellen, Because Ellen, if if
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it's not, I was making a joke. It's the weirdest
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: makeup I've ever seen that actually makes her look c
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: G I. But it looks so much like that, it's
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: it seems likelier to me that it's a c G I. Ellen,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And I don't understand why. Surely not proved me wrong? World. Well,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking now, if I'm Ellen and they say, hey,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: we want to choot a bunch of spots with you,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: we'll pay five million dollars, or we'll pay you three
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and a half million for your image likeness, you could
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: stay at home. I would stay at home. I would travel,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: you would, sure, that's true? A million a half bucks? Yeah,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of dough how would travel? Plus? Also,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, like curse spots in these spectrum commercials are
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: so small and limited that it couldn't possibly take more
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: than half of a day per spot. Yeah, and they
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and when you're a big star like that, you can
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: dictate it. You can be like, sure, I'll do it.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You've got me for two hours, right, you have to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: pay for the teleportation, that's right, you know, But it's
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: so Yes, they called the wild thing to stop. Stop,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: everybody stop. Yeah. Of course maybe Harrison Ford was so
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: stoned he didn't even realize it wasn't a real dog.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: God bless him. All right, So back to coyotes. There
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: are they are. The scientific name is Canis Latran's barking dog. Sure, boy,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: they make a lot of noise. We'll get to at
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: their nineteen. Subspecies generally has to do with their range,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: but sometimes it can be bigger or smaller, different kind
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: of coats um and they. One thing we will learn
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: throughout this whole thing is and we need a T
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: shirt that says this is dang it to the coyote
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: cannot be stopped. Boy do they persevere. There's probably no
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: greater survivor maybe currently alive on Earth that's a mammal
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: at least than a coyote. Yeah, I mean we will see.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: There have been efforts over the years to extinct them
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: on purpose, like a coyote holocaust. Yeah. And the and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the coyote just trots away with that signature bounce and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: gives the finger and and it's actually good luck. Yeah,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and has actually expanded the range and swollen in population
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: despite an effort to to drive them purposefully to extinction
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: a well funded really yeah at different times. Yeah, it's
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing, Yeah, it really is. I mean I feel
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: very bad for coyotes. I do to Um. One reason
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do this one is because there's coyotes
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: in in Atlanta, is in every major city in America
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: almost yea. And there's coyotes around humans in my neighborhood
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and that means it's Momo's neighborhood too, And so you
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: me went off on this, like she found out about
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that and just started learning everything she could about coyotes, Like,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: we need a new fence. We got to get a
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: coyote vest for Momo, which she now has. Yeah, she
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: looks adorable in it. They work for hawks and things too, right, Yeah,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: it's I think they're one and the same predate predator vest.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: But I think it's called like the brand name as
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: a coyote vest. I think I think, Um, like, we
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: know a lot about coyotes because they're in our neighborhood,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and like the more we learn about it, the more
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it's like I hate them in that they would take
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Momo if they had a chance. Um, but I also
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: do feel bad for them too, because they are uh,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: just trying to make their own way and live there.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: You know, they're just being a coyote, right exactly. I
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: mean Emily and I saw coyotes in our neighborhood in
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: l a and Igorrock on walks and we saw, uh,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: we've seen them in Atlanta. We saw one a few
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: months ago at night that looks very sick and was alone. Um.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: But we will dispel some myths. Not every coyote you
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: see alone as rabid. Not every coyote see during the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: day as rabid um. And we'll get more into this,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: but they if it weren't for people, coyotes would be
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: out all the time during the day. Yeah. They're not
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: nocturnal by nature. No, they're not. They're diurnal and the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: naught by nature. And well, they may be the ones that, um,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that that live closest to humans and urban areas or
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: suburban areas have actually adapted their behavior and become I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: don't know what you call it. I guess they are nocturnal,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: but they're most active at dawn and dusk. But they're
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: definitely not diurnal where they're active during the day and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: sleep at night like they normally are. They've actually altered
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: their behavior, and it's just one of the many coyotes
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: are like, fine, that's that's fine, will change, will change
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: to stay alive. That's right. Uh. I think another Urban
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: County was another band name I thought was good and
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I actually looked that up and of course there's an
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: urban County band. Uh. Speaking of urban counties, they actually
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: caught one in at Metro Atlanta recently, very very rare,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: all black coyote named Carmine. They trapped the big reggoo. Interesting,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: but I mentioned that trot. That's how you like if
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you're out walking at night or walking your dogs and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: you see what you think is a dog and it's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: got this there's this little signature bouncy trot. You're like,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: oh no, no, no no, that's no dog. All right. So
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: back to counties in general, Uh, they are wolf like,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: but they have narrow, more narrow snouts. Uh, they're not
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: quite as muscular. Um Ed Grabanowski helped us put this together.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: He wanted to point out that they're bigger than foxes,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: which I thought was funny. It seemed obvious to me
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: that they're bigger than foxes, but maybe not everyone knows that. Well.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: The first Uh, coyote that was spotted by Anglo Americans,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: which was the Lewis and Clark expedition. Um, they thought
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: it was a fox from Afar, and then when they
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: shot one and got up close, they're like, oh, it's
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: kind of wolfe. They don't look like foxes at all
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: to me. No, but I guess it was like staying
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: far enough away that I couldn't tell. Who knows. People
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: were much dumber back then. They were all smoking opium
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: on that trip. I also like, I would like to
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: acknowledge a stuff you should know. First, we had a
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: mid show producer change. Jerry started out the show about
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: eight nine minutes ago. She said, to heck with this,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: She's had it. Jerry had to go. Jerry had to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: go do a call and said Josh, Josh, Josh. He
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: stepped in. Welcome Josh. Never happened before. Thanks for doing that.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I wonder who's going to finish up the show. I
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: don't know, our little pecking bird perhaps. Yeah, okay, you
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: acted like you didn't get the reference the dipping bird. Theah,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the dipping bird. Uh. So coyotes bigger than a fox,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: smaller than an elephant. Uh, their tip nose to tail,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: body length usually about two to five ft. Yeah. They
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: basically looked like somebody took a shrink ray on a
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: wolf and just dropped it by like, yeah, fifty pounds.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Their fur brown tan, kind of gray, kind of modeled. Uh,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and you know that's a coyote. Yeah. They eat mammals mostly,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: but well also there are omnivores el eat berries. If
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of berries, Oh yeah, they'll eat They
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: love fruit. They love figs apparently, but they're diet as
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: mammals supposedly. Here's the thing. If you're just kind of
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: like coyotes, cool, whatever, they're related to dogs in there,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: you know, all over the place. I want you to just,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: first of all, listen to this episode. But things just
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: start like researching kyotes. You will be astounded and amazed
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: at every turn. Coyotes like fruit. So do you know
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: what coyotes do. They climb trees and balance on branches
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: so that they can get all the fruit that they want.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Look it up. Look up pictures of coyotes climbing trees.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: They take small animals like dogs out of the backyard,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: so coyotes can jump over fences six ft are under
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and squeeze through slats of pickets three inches or wider.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: They also dig under if they need to do all
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: sorts of crazy stuff. Coyote will say, hey, lizard, come
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: here your lunch. Yeah, they'll eat lizards, will so they'll
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: eat just about lead, insects, Yeah, they'll lead insects, they'll um.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: They specialize in rodents, small mammals, rabbits, that kind of thing,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: but they will eat just about anything. And one of
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the things that its sounded me the most is um.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And I know we're hopping all over the place here,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: that's right, And I want this to just evolve into like,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: here's a cool coyote effect, but it may That's all right.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: They engage in the social behavior called fission fusion, where
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: they can be they're totally fine hunting alone, living alone,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: but they're also totally fine hunting and packs living in
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: packs depending on the kinds of resources available. So if
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: there's like deer in an area, coyote can't take a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: deer down on their own, but at coyote, if there's
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: deer available in the area, they'll get with other coyotes
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in the area and hunt in a pack. But normally
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: they just hunt by themselves when there's like say, lots
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of rabbits, because all it takes is one. But depending
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: on the food available and the resources available, and how
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: many other coyotes are in the area, they'll come into
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and out of these fluid packs, depending on basically the situation.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Like what you uh. Here's another thing, Like we said,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: they small rodents and mammals usually, But if you're an elk,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: like with a head cold, watch your back because that
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: coyote knows it, and he knows that you're not feeling well,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and he might come at you with a buddy or
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: two and feast on you for a few days because
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: of that fusion. They've entered that fusion mode and now
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: they're hunting impacts. Here's one thing you don't really need
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to worry about, is coyote attack on yourself. It has happened,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: but it's very rare. One of the most astounding things
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I've ever seen is a coyote that was sneaking up
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: on a little kid playing in their driveway, must have
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: been in California or something like that, and the family
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: cat comes tearing around the side of the house as
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: at the moment the coyote is about a pounce on
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the kid and jumps onto the coyote. That one pushes
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: off of the coyote, the coyote takes off. The cat
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: saved the little kid's life. Yeah, the most amazing thing
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I've ever seen. I saw him just from last night. Uh,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a group of a pack of coyotes was fended off
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: by a cat and they caught up. Someone caught it
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: all on their house camera. You don't mess with cats, man, No,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I know they're they're vicious. Yeah so so yeah in
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: that one, if you watch closely, you can show me
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: that one that one of the coyotes all over the caches.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: She's basically watching animal snuff movies for a while. Researcher,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you have to stop. This can't be healthy
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: for you. But um, but like should just be sitting
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: in bed with her knees pull chest Like they're not
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: going to give home off, they're not gonna get up.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: But one of those coyotes to get out of the way,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the cat just jumped right up on like this five
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: foot wall right next to it, like a vertical leap
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: up onto the wall. It's not even like it's nothing,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: but but yes, cats still mess around. With coyotes, it's
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing. So uh, they live usually only about six
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to eight years in the wild. Um, they have seen
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: them a oldest ten or fifteen. But I kind of
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: wondered about dogs and like just a dog in the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: woods that never a feral dog that never was claimed,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Like if that really was a short lifespan as well,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: probably kind of curious compared to a domestic dog for sure. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Uh.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: If you are a coyote, you will choose your mate
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: for life, which is very very sweet. Yeah, unless that
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: mate dies and then they are allowed to go out
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and find a new mate. Socially it's okay, yeah, but yeah,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: they they mate for life. They raised their young together. Um,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and the the young grow up really quick. They usually
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: have about litters of I think I saw six on average,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: but it can be as low as three. I'm sure
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: you can go even lower than that, but it can
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: get up into the teens. They need them. And this
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: is why coyotes have proven utterly impossible to exterminate. Thankfully,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: we stopped trying to do that, but for a very
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: long time we tried to and we'll talk about more later.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: But the reason why it proved impossible is because coyote
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: mothers basically change the number of coyotes they have in
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: their litter depending on how the population is expanding or contracts. Amazing,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and they do this. One of the ways that they
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: figured out they do this is that coyote howell where
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: you hear coyote howling nearby, and then some other one
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: is often the distance and another one even further off.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: They figured out that they are basically taking a census
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: how many of you got, and the last response will
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: actually trigger a hormonal change in female coyotes who are
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a reproductive age, and they will have more pups than
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: they would have if they got in a response to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: their call. Unbelievable. Uh. They have their well talk about
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: their families in a sect, but they raise their young
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: in dens. Uh. Sometimes they will make their own den,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: but a lot of times they will take over the
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: den of another animal and uh renovate it, make it
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: their own, usually expand it a little bigger, but a
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: little macromay. Yeah, maybe at a steam shower perhaps, Oh nice,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: You never know. Uh. They returned to their dens if
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: they can, uh, year after year, if it's available, and
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: sometimes you will find them in weird places though, like
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: a drainage tunnel or in the cross space of a
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: house or something. But those are obviously urban coyotes. Yeah,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and so they're their territory actually is. It can be
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: really big, it can be really small. It depends on
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: how dense their food sources are. Yeah, they're really uh
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: flexible yep, with with how they live their lives, like
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: in every single way, shape or form, so so much so.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I mean we talked about the fission and the fusion
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: um social structure. It's just this fluid social structure um
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: in the pack. The basic unit of of coyote society
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: is the family, the mother and the father, the two
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: alpha's and then their offspring or betas this gets really interesting,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: and their offspring again, depending on the resources, they may
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: stick around and help raise another litter. Those are called helpers.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: They may stick around and basically just mooch. They call
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: those slouches. Yes, slouches are the ones who come home
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: from Appalachian State spend a lot of time on the couch.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: But they're they're they're in the pack. But it just
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: says here they're not contributing in any way basically. Yeah, um,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: and then so some some beata's depending like if food
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: starts to get scarce or whatever, some alphaals will be
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: like you, you need to go. It's time for you
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to go find your own territory, of your own range.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Go be a loner, Go find a mate, just get
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: out of the basement basically. Um. But other times they
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: might be allowed to stay, depending on the food sources.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And and that's where that fusion and fission kicks in.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, all right, maybe we should take a
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: break here and we'll talk about loner coyotes right after this.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: M alright, we're back, and we were talking about the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: pack size, how it can shift depending on the resources. Uh,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: there are also lone or coyotes. Maybe their beta they
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: get kicked off the couch finally, or maybe they are
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: an aged out alpha. Um. And like I said, if
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you see a coyote by him or herself, that doesn't
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: mean maybe I should say itself doesn't necessarily mean they're rabid.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Because you get on these Facebook neighborhood pages and there's
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: coyote sites sightings, and people lose their minds and give
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: out a lot of bad information. It goes both ways.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: People are either like say kill them, kill it, kill
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: it with fire as fast as you can, or else.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Other people are like, well, I've been feeding it for
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks. It's nice. It likes to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: come play with my dogs, right, Or it's out during
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the day it's so it's rabid for sure, or it
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: was by itself, so it was rabid. There aren't There
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: haven't been big outbreaks of rabid cavities and many many,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: many years. Yeah, apparently they made a concerted effort to
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: eradicate rabies among coyotes and so not just coyotes, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I think mammals in the wild in general. And so
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: they started basically dropping vaccines bait basically but vaccinated. Would
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you say wolf bait? I don't think that's a widely
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: known term that My buddy Eddie, he's just say that
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: for farting, he's dropping wolf baite. He might have made
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that up. So imagine if that was vaccinated, that's what
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: they were doing, and um, dropping wolf baite, that's that's
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: good stuff. I gotta say, it's nice, haven't Josh t
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: laughing over there? Not? Jerry's just permanent lack of care,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: no idea, no idea. Um. So they actually managed to
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: largely get rid of rabies among coyotes from what we understand. Yeah,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: so maybe we should talk about the beginnings. Go ahead,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, but they do finally carry distemper,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and they can carry rabies. Is not to say like
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: there are rabbid coyotes. It's just not a big problem.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And one of those Facebook commenters I quoted saying that
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: it likes to come play with my dogs. That actually happens.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Coyotes are known to play with dogs. That's how Carmine,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the rare black um coyote was trapped. He made friends
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: with a Great Pyrenees in Smyrna and was playing around
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and like they finally set up some traps in the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: yard and he fell for one of them. Um. Those
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Pyrenees are beautiful dogs, they really are. But um, that
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: pyrenees hopefully had distemper vaccine because just playing with the coyote,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: it can be it can it can get distemper and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: that's something you want your dog to have. No, not
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: at all. So uh, let's talk a little bit about
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the beginnings of the coyotes. They were, or at least
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: what we think is that coyotes and wolves and then
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: now extinct. Uh, other kind of dog basically were around,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and they were sort of the starting point for what
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: are counties and wolves, but they were apparently much more
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: like coyotes and wolves. So they generally think that counties
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: were sort of the the o G evolutionarily speaking, right right.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I saw also that, um, there's a line of thinking
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: that they descended from red wolves whose range still is
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: over the southeast in Texas. I think there's still a
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: few around today. Um. But the the however they started
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: it happened anywhere from I think two million years ago
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: to three hundred thousand years ago. Coyotes evolved, and again
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: here in North America. This is there there um home continent.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: But as they started to evolve, the ones that first
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: came along were bigger and um, heavier than the coyotes
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: we know today. But the problem is is they were
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: in direct competition be based on their size with wolves,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: and wolves are and have always been much more aggressive hunters.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: They don't tolerate other aggressive predators in their range, so
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: they'll go after a coyote. And so this is really interesting.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Over over the years, um, just from living with wolves,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: coyotes apparently started to shrink down in size so that
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: they could fill an ecological niche that had been left
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: open rodents and rabbits, which wolves don't care that much about.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Wolves want to take down like caribo and elk, and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: they hunt in packs exclusively. They don't care about rabbits, right,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: So that that left the rabbits to the coyotes and
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: kyotes kind of shrunk in size and started going after that.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And then one other thing that happened to Chuck was
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: that meant that because they were confronting wolves, the coyotes
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that were more aggressive and went after wolves or went
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to go fight wolves when wolves are around, they died out,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: which left just the timid ones, right. Yeah, so coyotes.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: That's why you won't fighting coyotes that are super rest
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: of these days, because in order to survive the wolf Challenge. Uh,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: there's another good band name. The Challenge is an amazing
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: band that's not bad. There's a lot of wolf band
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: zoh Will Parade and wolf Mother other Wolves. That's not
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the name of the band of other wolves. There might
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: be it could be. Um. Yeah, so those those are
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the ones that stuck around. Uh. And like we said,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: cooties are that's just another example of how bad they
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: want to survive. UM. These days, they are listed as
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a species of Least concern, which means don't we don't
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: have to do anything nothing, no conservation efforts whatsoever. The
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: only conservation effort that has been uh hung on coyotes
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: is that there's a law that says we we are
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: not allowed to drive them to extinction, which is a
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: reversal of original policies. We'll see, should we go ahead
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and talk about that. So, yeah, there was a policy,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: uh when was it in the nineteen thirties, starting in
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, I think, okay, where they basically said,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it was sensationalist journalism, but
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: that basically that coyotes were the scourge of the earth
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and they will kill every chicken and every sheep on
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: your and every cow and your property and your horses,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and we gotta get rid of them all. Yeah. So
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: basically it was a response to um Anglo American ranchers,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: well actually any American ranchers moving westward, UM farming cattle
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and sheep and all that um. And they were just
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: being predated on by wolves. So really they went after
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: wolves first, and they were really successful at almost driving
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: all wolves to extinction because wolves hunting packs, and so
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: if you kill enough wolves, they don't have enough wolves
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: to hunt in that pack any longer, and the remaining
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: survivors starved to death. Right, So they really worked at
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: getting rid of wolves, and it was really effective. Coyotes
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: were less effective, but they started the coyotes started preying
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: on the um the prey that the wolves were no
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: longer around to prey on. So they went after coyotes
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and they went after him big time. They killed hundreds
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: of thousands, millions and millions and millions of coyotes over
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the years with like sponsored I think they uh, they said, Congress,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: give us ten million dollars for the next ten years
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and we'll take care of them all right. And about
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the same time, so that was the Biological Survey the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Eradication Methods Laboratory of the Bureau of Biological Survey. Um.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: They basically said, we're going to start coming up with
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: strict nine pills and like um little misters that shoot
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: um cyanide in the coyotes face. And they were lacing
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: carcasses with all this poison and they were killing off
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: all sorts of other animals too, but no one cared
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: because everyone hated the coyotes so much that that they
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: just didn't care how many other animals died, just as
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: long as we were getting rid of the coyotes. But
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: around that time biologists started to be like, wait a minute,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain it's a good idea to get
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: rid of predators or any kind of animal that we
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: find a nuisance, Like, that's probably not the way we
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: should be doing things. Yeah. And it also coincided with
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: um sort of an anti poison movement where people were like,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, maybe we shouldn't be putting poison all
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: over our forests for just any old animal to die
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: if it comes near it. Yeah, And that was the
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: around the thirties, at the beginning of the thirties. But
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the the the government said no, we're getting rid of
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: We're getting rid of coyotes. The ranchers interests are above
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the coyotes interests. Yeah, big money, you know, talking right.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: So not only did they poison them, they would shoot
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: them from airplanes and helicopters and still today apparently killed
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of coyotes by shooting at them from
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: helicopters like taxpayer funded programs do that. Yeah, they they
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: definitely are still culling coyotes and cooties are still giving
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: them a little skinny paw middle finger. Right. So I
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: have the seventies Richard Nixon apparently banned the use of poisons,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: had no idea about that, signed the Endangered Species Act
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy three, and that gave the coyotes enough
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: breathing room to basically say, Okay, we're not going to
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: go extinct. But here's the thing. Because we were so
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: successful at wiping out wolves, the coyotes, which have been
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: limited almost exclusively to the southwestern United States sir to
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: spread and where the wolves had once been, Coyotes started
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: popping up in places they had never been seen before,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: southeastern United States. There, They've been spotted in Central America
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: at this point. They were found in nineteen forty on
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, which is, at least from
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: what I could tell, half a mile swim from the mainland.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: And apparently they're pretty good swimmers too. Um. And then
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: they started to move into the suburbs, and then they
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: started to move into the cities, and now today, there's
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a guy at Ohio State named Stanley Girt who specializes
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: in studying coyotes in Chicago. Downtown Chicago has hundreds of
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: coyotes living in alleyways and crevasses and all sorts of
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: places right out of sight of human beings. And they
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: just come out at night and they've learned how to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: navigate traffic and just basically stay out of side. Oh,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: if you look, if you just type in urban cooties
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: to your favorite search engine and looked under images, there
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: are pictures of coyotes like in the middle of like
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: strip malls and with you know, casinos behind them, and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: like they're just everywhere. Like I'm surprised I haven't seen
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: one in Times Square at this point. Wasn't it in
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Heat where they show that coyote like crossing the street
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: or crossing the highway? I haven't seen that so long.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it's in Heat. Good movie. Should we
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: take another break, Let's do it all right? More coy
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: out speak right after this. So just just to point
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: this out one more time, if you remember from our
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Lyme Disease episode, we've concluded that if we had no
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: wiped out wolves, ticks, wouldn't have been able to take
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: over and expand because the dear population wouldn't have exploded.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: There would not be coyotes in Chicago right now if
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the wolf population was stable in the United States or
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: North America. Yeah, and coyotes also, we're able to live
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: in and are able to live in urban environments, whereas
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: wolves could not. Oh no way. So they really were
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: basically like, hey, we'll we'll go where the wolves won't go.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: We'll eat what the wolves won't eat. We'll hunt by
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: ourselves because the wolves can't and uh, look at us,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna thrive. Yeah. And without wolves, there's
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: nothing to to keep them in check, to keep their
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: population in check. Angry facebookers. That's it basically, So that
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: whole eradication campaign has been put to the side. There's
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: definitely still lots of coyotes that are killed every year. Yeah.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I think between two thousand and six and two thousand
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: eleven they killed more than half a million coyotes legally.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I saw that there's a half a million that are
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: killed a year still, Yeah, like one a minute every year.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I've also seen thirty five thousand. I don't know if
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: it's just certain divisions are responsible for like half a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: million or maybe certain years they ramp up the efforts
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: more than others. I don't know, but they're there are
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: definitely still a tremendous amount of coyote deaths. But as
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: we've seen, coyotes have been um extremely successful in the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: face of this extermination campaign. Um, just by by reproducing
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: depending on the local population. Yeah. Yeah, And if you're
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: a rancher, you you don't have to be a part
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: of some program like you're you're taking care of things
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: in the rancher way, which is traps, guns, yeah, poison. Yeah.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: There's no laws protecting coyotes whatsover. Again, the only law
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: as far as I know, I think it's part of
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act that says we're not allowed to
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: drive coyotes to extinction. But that's it. You can kill
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: a coyote. The only things keeping you from shooting a
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: coyote like in city limits or gun ordinances. Basically, you
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: can kill a coyote anyway you want. Um. But here's
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the thing, go visit in the hospital. Um. But the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: thing is is what they're starting to figure out now
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: is because they're so successful that you don't actually want
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: to kill them. Killing them has this ripple effect through
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: their society where they start reproducing more. And here's the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: other thing. If the coyote is still not if it's
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: not acting aggressively towards humans, if it hasn't started to
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: take pets, if you just know it's in the area
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: but it's trying to keep its distance, you may actually
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: be better off with that coyote because if you get
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: rid of that coyote, another coyote is going to move in,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: and that coyote might be much more aggressive than the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: last one you just got rid of. Like, if you've
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: got a decent neighbor, maybe that's good enough. So that's
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: kind of like the idea that's dawning over people with
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: coyote management is coyotes aren't going anywhere. They're staying put,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and the best you can hope for is one that
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: keeps this distance and is afraid of humans. Yeah, which
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: is generally what's going on in urban areas. Uh, when
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: we're talking about ranchers. The reason they're doing this is
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: not just because they hate coyotes, is that they lose
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of um animals due to uh, these predators
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: they that just sounded so mean. These predators. Uh, there's
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it's hard to get good stats. But the US d
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: d A said in two thousand fifteen there was self reporting,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: which you always got to kind of wonder of thirty
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: three thousand a little more in change of adult sheep,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: four thousand lambs lost to coyotes, and again that self reported,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: So take it with a grain of salt. But there
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: they do lose a lot of animals and chickens and
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: things like that. I've gone on my soapbox before about
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: keeping your cats inside. I'm not gonna do that again
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: except to say keep your cats inside. Yeah, if you have,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: like you know, you're on the fence about keeping your
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: cats inside, you just watch some of the videos that
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you be seen, yeah, or just cats being taken. Do
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I want my cat to live several years longer? Because
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the statistics show that outdoor cats don't live as long.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: And not just that, um, not just with cats too,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: but also with dogs if you if they're coyotes in
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the area, and there's a really good chance there are
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: no matter where you live in the US, you um
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: do not You should not leave your small dog, in
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: particular outside unattended. You basically let them out, hang out
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: with them, and then let them back in. You definitely
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: don't leave them out at dusk or at dawn by
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: themselves or overnight. That's right. Uh, we said that you
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: don't need to worry too much about being attacked as
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: a human. There were a couple of kind of grizzly cases.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: One that's just very difficult to even talk about, frankly.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: In nine, little three year old girl was dragged from
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: her driveway in California and the dad did rescue her,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: but she died as a result of her injuries from
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: that fracas. In two thousand nine, there was a really
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: strange thing in Canada where a nineteen year old woman
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: was stalked and killed by at least two coyotes while
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: hiking in the middle of the day. And this is
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: apparently the only, like only adult human killed by coyotes
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: on record. So yeah, and the only explanation for that
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: that I could possibly come up with is that she
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: was around their den. It was around their pup raising time,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: right say, spring and summer is a pretty bad time
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to be around, getting real defensive of their turf. And
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: then thirdly that those were um mated with wolves. Uh.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Interesting because when the coyotes will mate with dogs, they
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: will mate with wolves. It's not like super widespread, but
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: it does happen in producing coy dogs and coy wolves.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: But the coy wolves in particular can be much more
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: aggressive than your standard coyote. Yeah, so I wonder if
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: those three factors played a role in it. Probably it
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: was definitely an outlier. It's it's very I mean, it's
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: sad no matter what did that girl also, she was
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: like an up and coming country singer, like on the
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: verge of breaking out and Taylor Mitchell. Yeah yeah. So
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: um they say, like we said that these kill couty
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: programs don't even work that well and that there is
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: uh their statistics to back up the fact that, um,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: non lethal methods of county control or more effective, which
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: we're talking about scaring them, like wind chimes and air horns.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: They're really skitty and jumpy, So if you make a
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: lot of noise in front of a county they're probably
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: gonna bolt. Yeah, it's called hazing. Yeah, and you don't
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: like anytime you see a coyote around your area really anywhere,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: just be a good neighbor. You want to haze them,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: do you not just let it happen? Don't just let
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: it pass by? Like, you need to take that opportunity
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: to haze them, to keep them feeling insecure, more secure. Right,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: The more secure uh a coyote feels, the more the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: more um audacious, embrazen, they're going to become coming into
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: your yard trying to take your your dog or your cat.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: So you want to haze them every chance you get
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: so that they know to stay over there. This is
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: their turf, this is your turf. Right, So if you
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: have an umbrella, you want to open the umbrella. This
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: says to pick up your small dog. Um, I've also
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: read right, I've also read you don't want to do
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that because you make yourself small when you do that,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: and you when when when you're hazing a kyote, you
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: want to make yourself as big as possible. What do
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: you mean yourself? When you squat down to pick up
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: your dog, you seem smaller than you do standing up
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: with your arms spread, but do it very quickly. Well,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: But the better thing to do is keep your dog
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: on a non flexi lead, like a straight leash. It's
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: no more than like six ft and things. Just keep it,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: just pull it back close to you while you're like
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: waving your arm and shouting at the kyote to go away. Yeah.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: And I also thought it was funny that Ed pointed
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: out that like even if you have a big dog
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: that could like kill a coyote, Like, is someone gonna say, like, oh,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I think you can take them, go get him zeus?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah maybe not, some people would know. You never know.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Have you seen those Irish wolfhounds. M sure they're like
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the largest, the largest dogs. Yeah, wolfhounds. They're like bread
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: to take on wolves, So they could take on a coyote.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I could see that having that temptation be like, yeah,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: my dog really could take on this coyote. Maybe what
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: did I? Oh? No, that was dingoes that petted in Australia.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Of course, that they were coyotes is not North America.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: But dingoes were a little they weren't dogs either, And
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and it was like foxes No, I mean they look
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: like dogs, but when you're around them, and this was
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: at a place where you can hold koalas and stuff
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: like that, it was obvious that it's not a dog. No,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: they're wild dogs right, Well not I don't even think
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: they're wild dogs. Um or maybe I mean they're they're
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: totally related. But I just remember getting the sense um
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Scotty and I both did my friend that was with me,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: um whom you know, they just there was a certain
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the way they carried themselves. And I'm just like, you're
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: not a dog. It literally is a dog Canus lupus dingo.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: So it's a subspecies of like dogs. Yeah, but what
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I was saying, not a dog, like not a domesticated dog,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: wild dog. Yeah, you could just tell the difference. And
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the same is true with coyotes because coit dogs,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: like you said, are things. Look at that cute little dingo. Um.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Coit dogs are in kit puppies are super adorable and
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: technically you can raise one and even a full county
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: if you get it as a puppy, you could have
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: it as a pet. It's not a good idea because
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: they are coyotes and the cody's gonna coyote. H it
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: has happened there or you know, you see those eccentric
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: people out there that have like a pet coyote. It's
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the thing, but it's just not a good idea. They're unpredictable. Yeah,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: you don't want to like get a cat companion for him.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Um in the United States. So uh, the coyotes image
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: has really gone through some weird transitions. Early on had
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: a really bad reputation UM and apparently was made way
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: worse by Mark Twain when he wrote rough in It
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: in seventy two. There were a few pages dedicated to
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: how lowly a coyote is, and everybody was like, yeah,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: we hate coyotes from that point on. But that actually
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: followed in partially this view that had been around for
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: ages that Native Americans had of coyotes, not necessarily that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: it was a lowly animal, but that it was a trickster,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: kind of like a brare rabbit type. UM. But then
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: he was also in some with some some groups like
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the Creator God, the Creator Deity. There's all sorts of
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: different roles that the coyote played in Native American mythologies,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: because there were so many different Native American mythologies. But
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: it was very prominent in Southwestern tribes UM mythologies, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: very frequently as a trickster, very frequently. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything else. I don't believe I do either.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: If you see a coyote, Hayes, it really shouldn't kill it, like,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: make sure that it's kept on its feet and insecure
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: your Petzil. Thank you. If you want to know more
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: about coyotes, go look up a coyote standing in a
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: tree and that will really set you off. Since I
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: this grizzly trigger warning email. Has to do with our
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: body under the Bed episode, So you know, if you're
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: not into listening to this kind of stuff, tune it out. Hey,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: guys listening to the body into the Bed episode, and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: was reminded of a similar awful case in Jacksonville, Florida,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: where I live. In my neighborhood, an eight year old girl, Maddie,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: disappeared while playing outside one afternoon and year yard her yard.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Long story short. Her neighbor Josh Phillips, who was fourteen
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: at the time, was playing with her and accidentally hit
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: her in the head, she said, with a baseball bat
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: injuring her. I looked into this. Apparently the story was
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: she threw the ball, he hit the ball, and the
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: ball hit her in the face. She started bleeding and crying.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: He and this is me talking now, not the email.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: He freaked out because his dad was an abusive alcoholic
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and he was afraid his dad was gonna come home
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and see what he'd done, so he panicked back to
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the email. He ended up killing her to keep her
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: quiet and stashing her body in the cavern beneath his
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: water bed on the second floor of his house, and
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: the eight days that follow, a massive community effort ensued
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to locate her, and Josh, her murderer, even participated in this,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: handing out flyers. He slept in that bed for seven
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: nights over her body. Police had even searched the home
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: several times, and the odor in his room was attributed
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: to many pet birds and cages he had and a
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: typical fourteen year old boy funk. Uh not a bad
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: band name either. She was discovered when they searched a
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: terrible four general boyfunk. Typical fourteen year old boyfunk. Well, no,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I just think boyfunk. Maybe none of that's good. I'd
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: take it all back. She was discovered when they searched
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: the home again and noticed a stain on the ceiling
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: on the floor below his room. Um, I thought it
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: was a blood stain. But I looked it up. I
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: think it was a leak from the waterbed and stained
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and that fortuitously led to finding her. He remains in prison,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: which has always been a big debate here when it
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: comes up for parole um. Just reason happened, m I
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: looked it up. I think this was in ninety eight
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: and he was fourteen. Wow. Wow, he's been in prison
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the whole time. Huh. Yeah, and it was. It's a
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: very tough thing because you know, his father was an
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: abuse of alcohol. Like he reacted because he was afraid
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: that he was going to come home and find him out,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and freaked out and hit this girl with a baseball bat,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: put her under the bed, and when he found that
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: she was still making noise, this gets really bad. He
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: stabbed her like eleven times and killed her. So it
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: is just a sad, sad, tragic case all the way around.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: That is from Mary. She said, I love the show
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: and have my husband hooked now too. She said, the
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: trauma then emotions of those eight days is something I
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: will never ever forget. Yeah, very tough case. I don't
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: know if thanks as appropriate, Mary, but I can't think
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: of anything else to say. Yeah, I don't even know
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: why I decided to read that. That was really sort
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: of caught me, caught my attention. Yeah, I can see
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: how Chuck. Well, if you want to get in touch
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: with us like Mary did, don't. If you want to anyway,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff podcast did
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: i heeart radio dot com. Stuff You Should Know is
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
• 45:00
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• 45:06
  Speaker 1: M m hm hm