Unlike wolves, which have seen their public image improve, attitudes towards the coyote remain largely negative.Ĭloseup of a mountain coyote's ( C. After the European colonization of the Americas, it was seen in Anglo-American culture as a cowardly and untrustworthy animal. The animal was especially respected in Mesoamerican cosmology as a symbol of military might. As with other trickster figures, the coyote uses deception and humor to rebel against social conventions. The coyote is a prominent character in Native American folklore, mainly in Aridoamerica, usually depicted as a trickster that alternately assumes the form of an actual coyote or a man. Genetic studies show that most North American wolves contain some level of coyote DNA. In the northeastern regions of North America, the eastern coyote (a larger subspecies, though still smaller than wolves) is the result of various historical and recent matings with various types of wolves. In spite of this, coyotes sometimes mate with gray, eastern, or red wolves, producing ' coywolf' hybrids. Humans are the coyote's greatest threat, followed by cougars and gray wolves. Its characteristic vocalization is a howl made by solitary individuals.

Primarily carnivorous, its diet consists mainly of deer, rabbits, hares, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, though it may also eat fruits and vegetables on occasion. It is highly flexible in social organization, living either in a family unit or in loosely knit packs of unrelated individuals. Their fur color is predominantly light gray and red or fulvous interspersed with black and white, though it varies somewhat with geography. The average male weighs 8 to 20 kg (18 to 44 lb) and the average female 7 to 18 kg (15 to 40 lb). The coyote was sighted in eastern Panama (across the Panama Canal from their home range) for the first time in 2013. It is enlarging its range by moving into urban areas in the eastern U.S. The species is versatile, able to adapt to and expand into environments modified by humans. Coyote populations are also abundant southwards through Mexico and into Central America.

The coyote is listed as least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, due to its wide distribution and abundance throughout North America. Other historical names for the species include the prairie wolf and the brush wolf. The coyote is larger and more predatory and was once referred to as the American jackal by a behavioral ecologist. It fills much of the same ecological niche as the golden jackal does in Eurasia. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. The coyote ( Canis latrans) is a species of canine native to North America.

Coyote scat