Imagine you’re driving home on an otherwise tranquil suburban road, when an unexpected neighbor pops in front of your headlights: a coyote. Most people think of coyotes as a nuisance at best , and a threat at worst — particularly when they’re spotted in residential areas.
Despite our fears, and a growing number of coyotes in cities and suburbs, coyote attacks are extremely rare in the United States. From 1977 to 2015, there were 367 documented cases of coyotes attacking humans in the U.S. and Canada, according to a 2017 study published in Human-Wildlife Interactions. There has only been one documented case of a fatal coyote attack in North America.
“In cases where you do end up with a coyote who is aggressive or attacks someone, those are extremely rare, but they pretty much always make the news,” says Laura Prugh, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Washington. “And so I think the perception we have is that they're more dangerous than they actually are.”
These small carnivores are highly adaptable, meaning that — unlike most other forest-dwelling predators — they can survive in urban and suburban areas, scavenging for food and hunting small prey. And while coyotes can occasionally mistake small, unattended pets like cats and dogs as prey, these incidents are also rare.
Yet Prugh and other experts argue that a long legacy of coyote extermination policies in the U.S can often place coyotes in more danger from humans than from their natural predators. Here’s what to do if you start noticing more of these wild canines in your area to ensure that both humans and coyotes stay safe.
