Gioca STEMAnimals

Animals · Deserts and drylands

Coyote

Canis latrans

The predator that expanded its territory

A coyote walks across the prairie with its tail down, a feature that instantly distinguishes it from a wolf.
A coyote walks across the prairie with its tail down, a feature that instantly distinguishes it from a wolf.
  • Status: Safe
  • Grasslands, deserts, and cities of North and Central America

Numbers

Weight
31 lbmales 18 to 44 lb, females 15 to 40 lb
Length
47 inadult males from 39 to 53 in, plus 16 in tail
Height
24 infrom 23 to 26 in
Lifespan
8 years6 to 8 years in the wild
Maximum weight
75 lbmale shot in Wyoming in 1937
Territorio
24 square milesmaximum value, down to 0.15 square miles
Food in one year
550 lbabout 21 ounces per day

Ten fun facts

  1. between 1938 and 1945, out of 750,000 coyotes killed by federal hunters, only two albino individuals were ever found.

  2. the largest coyote ever recorded was shot in Wyoming in 1937, measuring over five feet long and weighing 75 pounds.

  3. a coyote walks and runs with its tail pointed down, whereas a gray wolf holds its tail horizontally behind it.

  4. coyotes are strictly monogamous, unlike gray wolves, which sometimes practice both monogamous and bigamous matings.

  5. a female coyote in heat can attract up to seven males, which may follow her for an entire month.

  6. coyote pups fight fiercely with each other before they even begin to play, unlike the pups of wolves.

  7. a coyote kills rattlesnakes by teasing them until they stretch out their head to strike, then grabbing them quickly.

  8. in the Lamar River Valley of Yellowstone, coyote numbers dropped by 39 percent after wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s.

  9. the genome of the red wolf from North Carolina is made up of 75 to 80 percent coyote ancestry.

  10. a coyote sometimes urinates on food it cannot finish, likely to signal to other animals that it is taken.

The quiz answers

Five questions about this animal. Pick an answer and find out if it is the right one.

Question 1 of 5

How much does an adult male usually weigh?

Question 2 of 5

What distinguishes it from a gray wolf while running?

Question 3 of 5

How much of its diet comes from animal sources?

Question 4 of 5

Which animal does it collaborate with to hunt rodents?

Question 5 of 5

What happened to Yellowstone coyotes after wolves returned?

Try it yourself

Experiment 1

Weigh twenty-one ounces of pasta or rice on your kitchen scale: that is the exact amount of food a coyote must find every single day.

Experiment 2

Use a tape measure to mark five feet on the floor: that was the total length from nose to tail of the largest coyote ever recorded.

Experiment 3

Mark sixty-three days from today on your calendar: that is how long a mother coyote stays pregnant before giving birth to about six pups.

Data from Wikidata (Q44299) and Wikipedia (Coyote).