Rat control is not just a nice bonus option to reduce an irritation - we need to take it seriously in light of the Black Death. The fact of the matter is I see people having trouble with rat control in my area and we could use help to manage something that is potentially a lot more dangerous than coyotes.
Also, eastern coyotes typically also have wolf and dog DNA. Coyotes, wolves, and dogs can and do interbreed. This has resulted in some places in the eastern US in a subspecies that isn't afraid of humans due to the dog DNA, that can hunt in open areas due to the coyote DNA, and can also hunt in forested areas due to the wolf DNA.
Not just wildlife. A pack tracked my wily cat for months. I saw a couple of close calls. They learned that the cat liked to leave the house for a stroll a little before dawn. One morning they waited for him and took him right outside the cat door. It was pretty amazing that he lived nine years as thick as coyotes are around here. I can't bear to keep a cat locked in the house, so haven't had the nerve to get another since then.
I previously lost a cat to a pack of raccoons. But my cats collectively are way ahead of the game in terms of animal biomass harvested.
> We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually.
I don't understand how to marry the point you're trying to make to this. Cats are an invasive species to most small animals, and should be kept from accessing them.
In addition to the havoc they wreak on local small animal populations, outdoor cats live shorter lives than their indoor counterparts.
https://www.vetinfo.com/indoor-outdoor-cat-life-expectancy.h...
They’re willfully ignoring the facts and indulging in emotional projection. Domestic cats aren’t wild animals, they’re pets. Letting them roam outdoors is irresponsible both to local ecosystems and to the cats themselves.
Many dogs will run right out the door if left to their own devices, but somehow this is not ok while the same behavior for cats is. Very strange.
That's not at all difficult to explain. The dog is a nuisance to the nearby humans.
Even the term "domesticated cat" is a partial, minor misnomer [1]. They aren't really domesticated in the same way dogs are. They're wild animals, who's wild behavior just happens to be kinda chill and mesh well with humans.
Cats do live longer when you keep them inside. Humans would also live longer if we kept them in a prison for their entire life, feeding them a nutritionally perfect slurry. Not sure why its relevant to the discussion.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-s...
Cats can eat the wildlife in your yard. Or, you could have wildlife in your yard, and offset the calories by growing them on more farmland somewhere else.
The only difference in the second scenario is that you don't see the extra acre of woods — along with all the lizards and birds that would live there — getting turned into soybeans.
https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/...
That aside, you yourself, as a human, are an invasive species that kills tons of animals indirectly through your habits each year, should you thus be enclosed 24 hours a day? Cats killing off random birds. The ship of human intervention in the ecosystem has long since sailed, and blaming cat owners for a relatively tiny part of it is an absurdity in badly applied blame.
Unfortunately, that's not true. There was a study by some academics in Britain a few years° ago that showed effectively no difference in hunting success rates between belled and un-belled cats. The explanation is that cats are ambush predators, so once they (very quickly) learn how to stalk (they're moving slowly, anyway) without ringing the bell, their quarry doesn't hear the bell until they pounce, when it's (mostly) too late.
They were specifically looking at songbirds, as I recall. Maybe success rates for rodents are different - though that'd hardly be a good thing, because we generally want cats to kill mice and rats!
---
[On reflection]: Based on where I remember I was living when I read it, this was over a decade ago. (Where does time go?) There may have been updates since.
Concern for native birds and small mammals which are a keystone part of our ecosystems is not futile. They support literally everything required for human survival (carbon cycle, water, cycle, nitrogen cycle, pollination, sea dispersal, pollution control, etc) directly, and indirectly by their behaviors which have coevolved for millions of years. Invasive, feral cats, just like humans have only been here for a very short window of time, and while there are still native birds and mammals and plants left to care for, we can and should support them by minimizing the wonton carnage and death which we unleash each year. You’re probably aware that in North America alone feral cats kill between 10 and 30 billion native birds and small mammals a year. Euthanasia instead of trap neuter release is not a sailed ship. Planting native (human intervention) and undoing the lawns (human intervention) that have destroyed our native ecosystems is not a sailed ship. There is hope and it is exciting to work towards this in your own community and I hope you come to see that. The results (insects return, the soil enriches and traps carbon, and birds you've never seen before sing on your back porch in the morning) are nearly immediate and heartwarming
Edit: typo
and how many of those birds and mammals were old and ill and would be killed by other predators in similar situation in non-developed areas? Why didn't you specify that comparative number? May be because that would have shown that the cats are just doing the job of other predators pushed out by humans?
Btw, the cats kill up to 4 billion birds annually. At the same time 3.5 billion birds die hitting glass of the buildings. Cats kill old/ill. The birds hitting building aren't majority old/ill. Thus killings by cats are mostly beneficial to the bird species while glass buildings make tremendous damage to the bird species.
Cats being an invasive species in most places on earth means that most bird species have not evolved with them as a natural predator, and so are at an innate disadvantage.
And yes, birds hitting man made structures is a major problem. There can be two bad things at once. Just because there are two bad things doesn't mean we give up tackling one or the other.
it is well established pattern of predation in the Nature. Again, you specified the total number without providing the old/ill number. The relation of those numbers can completely change the conclusion, and i can only wonder why you didn't provide the old/ill number.
>Cats being an invasive species in most places on earth
What planet "earth" you're talking about? On the 3rd planet from Sun the wild cats are practically everywhere. And in the places where there are no cats, there are still similar predators - ferrets, foxes, etc.
>And yes, birds hitting man made structures is a major problem. There can be two bad things at once.
No 2 bad things here. Predation by cats is natural, and thus mostly good, in the Nature-way, for the species being predated upon. The man made structures are really bad as i described in my previous comment. Yet somehow you want to tackle the first and not the second.
My SO would occasionally unleash our cat and run alongside it.
>[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
You're posting an article by the Smithsonian department employing that felon convicted for animal cruelty toward cats.
Wrt. the article itself - it has pretty much no scientific merits as, not surprisingly given the authors' agenda, the article has an obvious fundamental flaw disqualifying it from science - it doesn't specify how many of that wildlife killed by cats were old/ill who would be anyway killed by other predators if it were a natural setting and not a developed area where the only predators left are cats.
If we to believe the article's total numbers then it would really mean what the cats are just doing the job of other predators pushed out by humans. Killing the old/ill birds, reptiles, mammals by predators is good for those birds, reptiles, mammals species. (and around humans say an old/ill bird not killed by cats would become a dead bird and a food for rats or something like this)
(Cat and dog flamewars are surprisingly vicious, as are bike vs. car flamewars.)
Where I live in Vancouver the coyotes have been very noticeable this year. I love to hang out with them in the park and garden, and hear them howl with the cop cars at night. They are not pets though - I always keep my distance and keep aware of the possibility that they might sneak up on me.
I take care of an outdoor cat in the neighborhood, and yes it's possible that a coyote will eat a cat or small dog. I worry about her but there are many fences, she is smart as well as a good climber. There are many hazards in the city that don't have the positive sides that coyotes do, and I think it's important that we learn to live with them and honour what they bring to our lives. That includes rat control, which we rather need here.
I live near a trail which also serves as a wildlife corridor, including coyotes that we regularly see on our dog walks. Years ago, we had a feral cat that we would feed and care for (including neutering). He remained outside because he refused to even be brought inside, let alone live with us. This guy was huge, and looked like he had won his share of fights with the scars to prove it. If a cat would survive in the wild, it would be this guy. But even he wasn’t tough enough to hold off (what I assume were) coyotes forever, and one day he just quit coming around.
After that I’ve noticed that we just don’t have outdoor cats in our neighborhood.
(And for context, we aren't out in the boonies; this is within the city limits of Redmond, WA, where the local elementary gets locked down about once a year because mama bear and her cubs showed up off that same trail.)
We have also noticed fewer raccoons on our security camera, which we used to see several times per week at night around our fishpond (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33952437) but now only once or twice per month.
Neighbors have also reported missing outdoor cats, which I believe are probably coyote kills (we live on a small peninsula ~1 km^2 so cats are unlikely to wander far from home). About 10 years ago, a nearby relative found the carcass of a cat on his front lawn, which he believes was a coyote. All that was left was the skin/fur and the intestines.
It's good fun to watch and listen to the coyotes until one of them steals a beloved pet away right before your eyes. My family has lost a total of three cats to these things and I know people who've lost smaller dogs. Cases of them attacking kids aren't unheard of either, and the risk isn't something to laugh at when it comes to unsupervised small kids.
As far as i'm concerned, when coyotes reach the population levels that it's easy to see in metro Vancouver, it's a good time to start a culling campaign. This is not an endangered animal.
People love to celebrate when the population of large predators near other people increases.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707064
> I used to go for six mile walks in the High Desert for exercise. I routinely ran into coyotes. They never bothered me.
> I did tell my children to not go out alone at night. There had been two or three attacks on children in the previous five years.
Another story that came up on HN was someone describing how he used to adventure through the wild areas near his home, and was never bothered by the lone coyotes he saw, but that on one occasion he met two coyotes together, and they began circling him. I didn't manage to find that one today.
Think of all the samples of the interaction function between humans and the >1mm coyotes (often unbeknownst to the humans) in American cities each day. The list of all attacks recorded in modern times has a Wikipedia page. In human-created spaces we make very little separation from the habitats coyotes live in. They choose not to predate the defenseless babies they encounter in backyards because it is not the ecological niche they have carved out.
I will let my older children play unsupervised in my backyard despite knowing there are dozens of coyotes in my city because no creature has made a niche out of killing them. The same is not true for my very young children but that’s because toddlers have made an evolutionary niche out of killing themselves :)
Implying blame on the owners of these pets for a plague of predators way outside the scope of any natural population they would have in an area is also just off the rocker. We live in a modified environment largely of our creation, where many wild animal populations have long since slid from whatever would have in some distant past been natural. Culling coyotes in urban areas, where they can be a real danger to both pets and kids, is not some sort of grotesque ecological sin.
You're talking about humans, right?
I live in Chicago and had a coyote briefly staying under my deck last autumn when the juveniles leave their dens. They regularly prowl through my neighborhood, traveling north and south on the commuter rail line tracks and ducking off into parks and backyards for hunting. Such a magnificent creature to see up close. That experience motivated me to kill the ornamental boxwood that was in my backyard and start planting native plants which can support native birds, pollinators and small mammals and in turn provide a food supply all the way up the food chain to that coyote. I wish more people in my city spent their money and time on that food chain instead of one that begins and ends at PetSmart.
I just wish this does not turn adversarial.
I was going to link to The Prince of Central Park [Rhodes, 1975]
But Wikipedia is too flaky to remember the 1975 novel, only the 2000 movie
doug-moen•8h ago
kjkjadksj•8h ago
giantg2•8h ago
otoburb•8h ago
A judge in Brooklyn recently ruled[1] that dogs are (now) classified as "immediate family members". I wonder if the this might push the Central Park Conservancy to step up considerations for eradication of the coyotes to avoid potential emotional damages in light of the ruling if such a situation were to occur.
[1] https://www.nonhumanrights.org/blog/dogs-family-members/
skeeter2020•4h ago
throw0101d•8h ago
From four days ago:
* https://globalnews.ca/news/11267424/nobelton-coyote-attack/
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
mikestew•7h ago
metabagel•7h ago
throw0101d•7h ago
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack
Currently (in Toronto) the attacks are generally against dogs/cats, but chasing of humans has been reported:
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-coyote-action...
* https://www.hawkeye.ca/blog/toronto-coyote-increase
metabagel•7h ago
IG_Semmelweiss•8h ago
lawlessone•6h ago
fmbb•8h ago
pinkmuffinere•8h ago
Edit: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack
throw0101d•8h ago
Perhaps adult humans are less likely, but child humans the risk could be higher as a coyote may think they can 'take' them; from a few days ago:
* https://globalnews.ca/news/11267424/nobelton-coyote-attack/
kibwen•8h ago
That said, I welcome coyotes in urban spaces, and have admired from afar the few bold urban coyotes I've come across. Humans need reminders that they're a part of nature and not apart from nature, especially in the city. In terms of actual danger, coyotes kill approximately infinity times fewer people than cars do, so let's focus infinity times more energy on solving that problem first.
billfor•7h ago
pfdietz•7h ago
GauntletWizard•7h ago
Yes, a small group of Coyotes could easily corner or snatch a small child and pose a danger to such. Is it likely? No. Is it reasonable to relocate the coyotes? Absolutely. It might also be reasonable to manage and not relocate the coyotes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Chamberlain-Creighton#Ev...
triceratops•7h ago
amanaplanacanal•6h ago
skeeter2020•4h ago
vunderba•7h ago
My Pyrenees/husky mix absolutely dwarfs them and they give her a WIDE berth the few times I've seen them while hiking.
southernplaces7•6h ago
steveBK123•8h ago
slwvx•8h ago
> It would be better to remove the coyotes before this happens.
following this logic, we should just kill all coyotes. We did this to lotsa other species, I hope we've stopped that.
bpodgursky•8h ago
skeeter2020•4h ago
triceratops•7h ago
At least relocate them out of cities. Why would you ever want a predator that large living inside a city?
Let a dog, a domesticated animal that we trust to live in our homes with our children and babies, off-leash in a city and people lose their minds. But coyotes move in and everyone's chill? Wtf
rufus_foreman•5h ago
triceratops•4h ago
rufus_foreman•4h ago
You sound like you think it's OK to let your dog run off-leash.
triceratops•4h ago
You suggested shooting dogs. Seek help.
rufus_foreman•4h ago
We catch a dog off-leash in a park and the dog gets relocated to...where?
triceratops•4h ago
rufus_foreman•4h ago
Chill, dude.
I don't know if we should kill dogs. That's not my call. But at least relocate them out of cities?
Would you ever want a predator as large as a dog living inside a city?
I wouldn't, I'm a cat person.
skeeter2020•4h ago
rufus_foreman•2h ago
Killed people here, yeah. What's the recourse when a pit bull kills you, skeeter2020? Can you tell me that? When you're dead from a pit bull attack, what's your recourse?
I'm really interested in the answer.
skeeter2020•4h ago
Ah yes, make it someone else's costly problem and let me feel good about myself because it's such a humane solution.
southernplaces7•6h ago
No, you don't have to kill all coyotes to control a specific population of them in a particular place in way that actually re-balances a completely unnatural saturation in their numbers.
There's nothing grotesque about recognizing the reality of these being urban spaces in which it might just not be a good idea to have many thousands more 40-kilo predators wandering around than would ever be natural even if the area were totally uninhabited by humans.
cowmoo728•7h ago
msgodel•7h ago
bell-cot•6h ago
I'd speculate that there has been considerable selective pressure against the "not highly avoidant of attacking humans" trait in coyotes.
VTimofeenko•6h ago
Coyote pups are adorable though. A couple of them made a lair in a drain about a month ago but have relocated since. Still see one of them around the neighborhood with his distinctive tail.