Are they more aggressive than the run of the mill urban coyotes in Southern California neighborhoods?  This bizarre story came to my attention yesterday and at first I thought there must have been a mistaken identity.  Wolves.  Or mountain lions.  But COYOTES killing a full grown woman in broad daylight in the wild?!  Unusual to the point of maybe being a first. 

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

Death by coyote attack is pretty, pretty rare.  The attacks I know of were usually because someone was walking a dog when a coyote tried to grab it, owner struggles to get dog and gets bit.  There was a toddler killed by a coyote here about 15 or 20 years ago but her family regularly left food out for them.  One morning the child was out in the yard and they killed her.  Jamie are the coyotes starving in Halifax? 

The whole thing feels like a Michael Crichton novel.  Nature Gone Wild!

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

There are other possibilities as well. The coyotes could have lost their fear of humans; that is not unheard of at all and in fact is the cause of increased coyote aggression in Southern California since the late 90's. Urban-wildland interface, yay!

There's also the possibility that these coyotes had grown accustomed to eating human food, either from food left behind by users of the park or by being hand-fed by people over time, not only teaching the coyotes to lose their fear of people, but also that people are a source of food.

I wrote a research paper on coyotes last year. I should dig it up and explore the cited resources some more to see if I can find something.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."