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With few natural landscapes available in the nation’s second-denseest urban environment, San Francisco’s coyotes are changing their diets, and they’re doing it in different ways depending on their zip codes.
The number of restaurants and the amount of pavement — or “impervious surfaces” — in a certain San Francisco neighborhood are influencing what resident coyotes eat, according to a new study published Tuesday inecosphere.
The study authors found that consumption of coyote rats was greater where the density of restaurants was higher, while consumption of human-sourced food was more common in more paved areas of the city .
“Chicken is a very important dietary element; we found it in 72 percent of the scatter samples analyzed in the study,” said lead author Tali Caspi, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Davis, in astatement.
After chicken was a source of natural coyote prey (pocket gophers), present in about 57 percent of the 707 total dispersal samples, followed by human-sourced pigs at 35 percent, and raccoons naturally acquired, by 16 percent.
Despite recent concerns about an increase in cat consumption, scientists found feline remains in only about 4.5 percent of the scatter samples.
Although coyotes have long been residents of San Francisco, they were driven out of the city in the early 20th century, only to return in the early 2000s, the authors noted.
“The city is currently home to a thriving coyote population, which regularly comes into conflict with urban residents,” they stated.
San Francisco, the researchers explained, is surrounded by water to the north, east and west and is crossed by Interstate-280 to the south, a freeway that has one of the highest traffic death rates in the country. been
“This study highlights the enormous range of dietary and habitat affinities of coyotes as a species,” said lead author Ben Sacks, director of UC Davis’ Mammal Conservation and Ecology Unit, in a statement.
Acknowledging that this trait is already known, Sacks explained that the study goes further, providing evidence of the “relatively narrow proclivities of coyotes as individuals.”
“They tend to stick with what they know,” he said.
The researchers encouraged San Franciscans to respectfully share their spaces with their coyote neighbors, with the goal of reducing human-wildlife conflict. That action, they explained, could include keeping cats indoors, not leaving pet food outside and disposing of waste safely.
The study’s authors expressed hope that their findings could help inform urban wildlife management strategies, which could prioritize protecting native coyotes while minimizing wildlife-human tensions .
“There are many different ways to survive city life as an animal,” Caspi said. “It speaks to the plasticity and resilience of these species to see all these different strategies for coping with urban life.”
