Coyote (Canis latrans): Facts, Diet, Habitat and Behavior

What does a coyote look like?

A coyote looks like a lean, long-legged dog with a narrow, pointed muzzle and tall, pointed ears. Its coat is usually grizzled gray or buff mixed with reddish brown, with black-tipped guard hairs along the back and shoulders. The throat and belly are pale, and the legs, ears and sides of the muzzle often have a rusty tinge.

The bushy tail has a black tip and a dark spot near the base, where a scent gland sits. One of the best field marks is how the tail is carried: a running coyote holds it low, pointing down, while a wolf tends to hold its tail level. The eyes are yellow with round pupils.

Coat color varies with region and season. Desert coyotes tend to be pale and sandy, mountain coyotes darker and grayer, and winter coats are much thicker than the thin, scruffy summer fur. Black coyotes occur occasionally, and genetic studies show that their dark color comes from a gene variant originally inherited from domestic dogs.

How big is a coyote?

Coyotes are much smaller than most people expect. Under a thick winter coat, the typical animal weighs about as much as a medium-sized dog such as a border collie.

Size changes across the range. Coyotes in Mexico and Central America are the smallest, and those in the north and east are the largest. Eastern coyotes of New England and eastern Canada, which carry some wolf ancestry, are often 14–20 kg (30–45 lb). The heaviest coyote on record, from Wyoming in 1937, reportedly weighed about 34 kg (75 lb), an exceptional historical figure. For the difference from its big cousin, see wolf vs coyote.

Relatives and hybrids

The coyote belongs to the genus Canis, together with the gray wolf, the domestic dog and the jackals of Africa and Eurasia. Fossils of animals very like the modern coyote are around a million years old in North America, making it one of the continent’s long-standing native carnivores. Biologists recognize about 19 subspecies, from the large northern plains coyote to the small, reddish forms of Central America.

All members of Canis can interbreed. In the wild, coyotes have mixed mainly with eastern wolves around the Great Lakes and with red wolves in the Southeast, and only rarely with dogs, because their breeding seasons and pair bonds differ. The larger coyotes of the Northeast, with some wolf ancestry, are often called coywolves; see what is a coywolf?

Habitat and range

Coyotes may be the most adaptable large carnivore in the Americas. They live in prairies, deserts, sagebrush, forests, mountains up to the alpine zone, swamps, farmland, suburbs and city parks. They avoid only the densest unbroken forests and the far Arctic.

Before European settlement, coyotes lived mainly in the open plains and dry country of western North America and in Mexico. Since the 1800s they have spread north, east and south. Today they live in every US state except Hawaii, across most of Canada, through Mexico and Central America, and into Panama, where they were recorded east of the Panama Canal in 2013. The full story of this expansion is told in where do coyotes live?

What do coyotes eat?

Coyotes are opportunistic omnivores, although most of their diet is meat. They eat mainly small mammals, such as voles, mice, ground squirrels, rabbits and hares, plus deer, especially fawns in early summer and carcasses in winter. Birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, grasshoppers and beetles are also eaten.

Plant food matters too. In late summer and fall, coyotes eat large amounts of berries, apples, persimmons, prickly pear fruit, melons and other crops. They are skilled scavengers and will feed on roadkill and on the leftovers of wolves and cougars.

Hunting style depends on the prey. A coyote catches mice with a high, stiff-legged pounce, chases ground squirrels and rabbits, and sometimes works in pairs or family groups to take deer. Coyotes have even been seen hunting alongside American badgers: the badger digs, and the coyote catches prey that bolts above ground. More detail is in what do coyotes eat?

Behavior and family life

Coyotes are flexible in their social life. The basic unit is a mated pair that defends a territory together, often joined by their pups of the year and sometimes by a few older offspring that help raise the next litter. Other coyotes, called transients, live alone and wander between territories, looking for a vacancy and a mate.

Family groups are smaller and looser than wolf packs, and coyotes often hunt alone even when they belong to a group. Territories vary from less than 1 km² in rich areas to tens of square kilometers where food is scarce. Coyotes mark their borders with urine and scrapes and defend them most strongly during the denning season. See do coyotes live in packs?

Coyotes are among the most vocal wild mammals of North America, with at least 11 distinct calls. Woofs, growls and barks warn and threaten; whines and yelps greet and show submission; and lone howls and group yip-howls carry across long distances, telling family members and neighbors where everyone is.

Most activity takes place at dusk, during the night and around dawn. A coyote typically travels several kilometers a night, often along trails, roads and frozen rivers. Coyotes are strong swimmers, but poor climbers.

Reproduction and pups

Coyotes are strictly monogamous within a breeding season, and many pairs stay together for several years. Mating takes place from January to March, and females are in heat for only a few days each year. After a pregnancy of about 60–63 days, the pups are born in spring, mostly in April and May.

The den is usually an enlarged burrow of a badger, woodchuck or fox, or a hollow under rocks, logs or even buildings. Litters average about six pups, but range from 1 to more than 12 depending on food supply and population density. The pups are born blind and weigh around 250 g (9 oz).

Both parents feed the pups, first with regurgitated food and then with whole prey. The pups leave the den at about 3–4 weeks old and are weaned by 5–7 weeks. They reach adult size at around 9–12 months. Some disperse in their first fall or winter, sometimes traveling more than 100 km (60 mi), while others stay with their parents for a year or more.

How long do coyotes live?

Wild coyotes rarely live beyond 10–14 years, and most die much younger. Mortality is highest in the first year, when pups face disease, starvation and predators. In many studied populations, the main causes of adult deaths are people, through vehicles, hunting and trapping, and disease such as mange. In captivity, coyotes have lived to about 18 years.

Predators, threats and conservation status

Adult coyotes have few natural predators. Gray wolves kill coyotes and keep their numbers down where the two overlap: after wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, coyote numbers in parts of the park fell sharply. Cougars, bears, golden eagles and American alligators occasionally kill coyotes or their pups.

People have tried to remove coyotes for more than a century. Government programs and private hunters in the United States kill hundreds of thousands each year, yet coyote numbers keep rising. Heavy losses often lead to larger litters and fast resettlement by transients, which helps explain the species’ resilience.

The IUCN Red List classifies the coyote as Least Concern, with an increasing population. It is one of very few large North American carnivores whose range is larger today than it was 200 years ago.

Coyotes and people

Coyotes have a long history in human culture. In the stories of many Native American peoples, especially in the West and Southwest, Coyote is a clever, foolish and sometimes creative trickster. Many people today know the cartoon Wile E. Coyote.

Coyotes eat huge numbers of rodents, but they also kill sheep, goats and poultry, which makes them unpopular with many ranchers. In towns, they occasionally take unattended cats and small dogs. Feeding coyotes, deliberately or by leaving out pet food and garbage, causes most problems, because it teaches them to lose their fear of people.

Attacks on humans are rare, and only two fatal cases are confirmed: a young child in California in 1981 and a young woman in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2009. For the real risk and how to coexist, read are coyotes dangerous?

Myths and facts

Myth: coyotes always hunt in big packs. Most coyotes hunt alone or in pairs. Groups mainly hunt together when tackling deer or other larger prey.

Myth: a chorus of howls means a huge pack. Two or three coyotes can sound like a dozen, because their rapid, varied yips and howls echo and overlap.

Myth: coyotes are only a western animal. Coyotes now live in every US state except Hawaii, including New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Florida.