http://natgeotv.com/uk/killed-by-coyotes/videos/fatal-coyote-attack

An awful thing to have happened, but can y'all guess what was banned in this wildlife preserve that caused these animals to lose their fear? I watched the full program when it aired last and I think I remember an anti-hunter saying something like "well, that is the cost of co-existing". God, it made me hot!!

Anyways, I thought y'all might be interested in this.

I don't think it is an issue of the animals losing their fear because they weren't being hunted.

Contrary to the claims, coyotes don't avoid people at all costs. I am not even sure where they got that notion and it is a shame to hear such information coming from Nat Geo. We like to think of ourselves as an unchallenged apex predator, but animals have been feeding on humans as long as there have been humans.

For years I have heard that animals have a natural fear of humans. This just isn't the case. Animals will often avoid humans as well as other sorts of animals to avoid risk. How much they avoid risk will depend on a lot of factors such as availability of food, individual health, and available habitat.

Taylor Mitchell was an adult, but a small adult. She may be the first adult killed, but that doesn't necessarily mean a new trend has started. There are frequently exceptions to the norms. In general, coyote attacks on humans are quite rare with just a few every year in North America.

I am not sure about the claim of coyotes breeding with wolves as being a recent event resulting in super hybrids. Cross species mating of similar species isn't uncommon with intermingled or bordering populations. What does seem to be new(er) is their expansion into new areas and most of these areas lack many apex predators and so they are basically expanding into an unoccupied niche.

From what I am finding on the web, it would seem that Mitchell might have been killed by coyote-wolf hybrids, socalled coywolves. If so, then she isn't the first adult human killed by coyotes, but by hybrids.

Thank you for your input.

I don't believe that animals have a "natural" fear of humans, but I remember watching a program on the man eating tigers of the Sunderbans (sp?) and the major event that never happened there (due to it being a mangrove swamp and extremely difficult terrain) was there was never major hunting of the tigers like in the rest of India. I've seen it mentioned in other programs about man eating mammals as well, that if the animals are not sick or injured in some way (as is the "norm" in such attacks) then in most cases the populations have not experienced predation by humans in generations (of the animal, not human generations).

They do still refer to them as coyotes, but it does appear that they were probably coywolves. I think there have been studies done on coyote populations in the mid west that show significant wolf DNA, but I can't cite my sources on this. I believe these studies were done before wolves began to migrate back into the Midwest too, but again I can't cite anything, this is from memory.

To my knowledge though no-one is working on changing their taxonomy to a new species, as would seem to me to be warranted. IE they successfully interbreed with their own kind and their offspring is viable and their offspring is fertile and they are genetically different from both coyotes and wolves and there are generally no genetically pure coyotes or wolves remaining in the regions where they are present (excepting areas where wolves are migrating to in search of new territory, but the species wasn't extant when this genetic variance was discovered(I think)).

So they had, what seems to me, to be the recipe for "man eaters". Genetic tenancy to hunt large animals from the wolf genetics, species generations of no experiences to associate humans with predation, and most likely species generations of experience of associating humans with food.

Send Rick Perry to walk around there. He'll take care of them.

I don't know enough about them yet, but I think you are right in that it does seem like it might be warranted. If as the guys on the vids about coywolfs are right in that this is an evolutionary step, then most definitely it should be considered.

Good example of what liberalism gets you.