After Democrats Ruined it, There's Now Downtown Coyotes: Inside the Secret Lives of Chicago's Predator

About 2,000 of the carnivores have adapted surprisingly well to city life, new images and tracking data reveal.

An extreme breed of coyote is finding there's no finer place than downtown Chicago, where the predator has learned to lurk under the radar of city life, new data show.

The versatile carnivore, native to middle America, has spread into nearly every corner of the U.S. in the past few decades, taking particular advantage of the suburbs and their wildlife buffet. (Related: "Coyote-Wolf Hybrids Have Spread Across U.S. East.")

But in some metropolitan areas, such as the Windy City, populations are now so high that no vacancies are left in the suburbs for these highly territorial animals—which means youngsters are being forced to strike out into the only remaining habitat: downtown.

Among the skyscrapers of Michigan Avenue and busy Lake Shore Drive, these animals are "pushing their ecological envelope," said Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, who has been studying coyotes since 2000.

The animals have altered their natural behavior to accommodate living in close quarters with people. Unlike wild coyotes, for example, Chicago's uber-urban coyotes are nocturnal, coming out when most people have gone home; have learned to travel and cross busy roads regularly; and maintain huge yet fragmented territories, according to new data from coyotes outfitted with a GPS collar or a Crittercam, a National Geographic camera that attaches harmlessly to animals.

"We constantly underestimate them," said Gehrt, who recently completed the first part of his urban-coyote research, funded by National Geographic's Committee for Research and Exploration.

"We felt there were parts of Chicago too urban, with too many people, for coyotes to live—and we were wrong," he said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141121-coyotes-animals-science-chicago-cities-urban-nation/

After Democrats Ruined it, There's Now Downtown Coyotes: Inside the Secret Lives of Chicago's Predator

About 2,000 of the carnivores have adapted surprisingly well to city life, new images and tracking data reveal.

After Democrats Ruined it, There's Now Downtown Coyotes: Inside the Secret Lives of Chicago's Predator

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