Photo by Harry Collins / Getty Images
By Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin
Caspi, T., Serrano, M. G., Vanderzwan, S. L., Kessler, J., Schell, C. J., & Sacks, B. N. (2025, January 21). Impervious surface cover and number of restaurants shape diet variation in an urban carnivore. Wiley.com. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.70152
With increased presence of coyotes (Canis latrans) across urban areas, having a better understanding of what coyotes eat and where, can garner insights into their diets in human-dominated landscapes. To determine how urban land use and land cover impacts urban coyote diet composition, a group of scientists in San Francisco spent 2.5 years collecting, and countless hours analyzing, coyote fecal samples to find their answers.
When mammals enter urbanized areas, a common behaviour change they exhibit is a change in their diets and foraging behaviours. Cities provide novel and different quality food sources, including access to human food. However, there isn’t much research on what coyotes are actually eating within cities, and how a city’s landscape can affect coyotes’ diets. The authors of the study hypothesized that coyotes in urban areas would eat more human food (vs. coyotes with access to green space would eat more natural prey), and even more specifically, that coyotes who hung around restaurants would eat more nuisance rodents, given high rodent activity in areas with a lot of restaurants.
Photo by Jillian Cooper / Getty Images
To figure out if they were right, the researchers collected coyote fecal samples from across San Francisco, including urban green spaces and conducted DNA-level analysis to differentiate individual coyotes. From the 700+ scat samples, the researchers identified 59 diet items (as a side note, cats did not figure prominently within the coyotes’ diets, despite people’s fears).
Findings
Image via Ecosphere, Caspi et. al., 2025.
The authors found that individual coyotes in San Francisco had varying diets according to their territories which had different environmental conditions. These highly urbanized areas provide a rich and diverse dietary landscape of human food availability for coyotes, including litter, nuisance rodents, and deliberate feeding of coyotes. The authors therefore hypothesized correctly and found that coyotes ate more rodents in areas with high numbers of restaurants and food services, as well as domestic chicken (Frequency of occurrence = 71.99%) and pig (35.36%) (i.e. chicken and pork). Alternatively, one area in San Francisco with the largest green space, plant communities, and grasslands, the authors found less diversity between individual coyotes’ diets due to more natural prey availability (e.g. gophers and voles).
What these findings suggest is that when coyotes have access to less urbanized areas, they consume less human food, while areas with more food service infrastructure lead to increased consumption of rodents by coyotes. These findings highlight that different land cover and use even within cities shape coyote diets.
What does this mean for human-coyote interactions in cities?
This study shows that not all coyotes rely on human food in urban areas; however, urbanization may push some individuals to rely more heavily on human food because of the limited availability of natural prey and a diversification of foraging strategies. It also shows how human economic and cultural activities (e.g. restaurants) shape coyote feeding habits. Therefore, identifying hotspots where human food may be more available to coyotes (e.g. areas with high numbers of restaurants/food services), and then applying interventions is an important step toward mitigating potential human-coyote conflict that can arise when humans and carnivores share tight spaces in highly urbanized environments.
About Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin
Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Guelph where she studied human-African wild dog conflict and conservation in Botswana, Africa. Valli has always been interested in the human dimensions of wildlife, in particular, humans’ relationships with large carnivores, she collaborated with the Fur-Bearers on a research project exploring Canadians’ perceptions of and knowledge about wolves. Valli is also passionate about dogs, and advocates for dog welfare through her Instagram @thelivesofwilddogs. In her spare time, she runs a pet pantry at her local community centre for pet guardians experiencing pet food insecurity.
