Downtown LA

Scat-egories: Poop Study Shows How Urban Life Affects LA's Coyotes

Coyotes in more populated areas eat fewer rodents, but eat five times as many cats.

The story of the city mouse and the country mouse is a well-known fable. Researchers from the National Park Service have spent the past two years studying a similar, if less adorable, tale: the county coyote vs. the city coyote.

Biologists wanted to understand how the diets of coyotes that live near downtown Los Angeles differed from those of their more rural cousins. The method they used involved looking at thousands of pieces of scat, aka coyote poop.

More than 3,200 pieces of coyote scat were dissected, largely by volunteers, to provide evidence of what the animals had eaten. Before being analyzed, the pieces were made sterile through a cleaning and heating process.

The results show a significant difference between the diets of urban and rural coyotes. More than 60 percent of the samples found in the animals’ natural habitat included signs of small animals such as rabbits and gophers, twice the rate of samples found in the city.

Coyotes in more populated areas eat fewer rodents, but eat five times as many cats. They also supplement their diets with a significant amount of pet food and leftover human food. Coyotes from both regions topped off their diets with similar amounts of ornamental fruit and insects.

The goal of the study was to understand how the presence of humans affects coyotes in a way that helps residents and policy makers make informed decisions on how best to live alongside our wild neighbors.

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