The lives of coyotes and bobcats in Washington state are complicated. Almost everywhere smells like humans, and there are also bears and cougars that like to eat coyote or lynx for breakfast. Washington bears and cougars wisely avoid areas populated by humans. Coyotes, lynx, and other medium-sized predators, on the other hand, behave quite differently, like a study in the science journal Science now occupied: You seem to be looking for closeness to people, according to the motto “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. And with that they are making a big mistake: As the study authors led by Laura Prugh from the University of Washington in Seattle show, the super predator kills significantly more coyotes and lynxes than all other large predators combined.
For their study, the researchers captured 35 coyotes, 37 bobcats and – as a representative of a large predator – 60 cougars and tied a collar with a GPS transmitter around them. Then, for five and a half years, they analyzed the movement patterns of the animals and compared them to other species. If an animal stopped moving, they would look for it and try to find out the cause of death.
The evaluation of the results shows that bobcats and coyotes greatly underestimate the dangers of humans. During the study period, 14 of the coyotes equipped with a GPS transmitter were shot or run over by people – but only three were killed by a cougar and one by a bear. Of the bobcats, eleven died at the hands of humans: eight were trapped and three were shot. Only two of a puma were killed, none of a bear. Overall, the risk of coyotes and lynxes being killed by a human within a year was more than three times that of being killed by a cougar or a bear.
Other animals successfully use the proximity to humans for their protection
Apparently, the two smaller predatory species fell into an “ecological trap,” the study authors write. This term is used in biology to describe behavior in which animals mistakenly choose a habitat in which their chances of survival are lower than in another environment in which they could also be.
Elsewhere and with other species, the strategy of using humans as a kind of shield against other predators works: in Yellowstone National Park, for example, female elk often give birth near roads. Because grizzly bears, which are the biggest threat to small moose there, avoid roads, they increase the chances of their calves surviving. In contrast to the elk, the coyotes and lynxes studied do not live in a protected area, but in an environment in which the super-efficient, omnipresent predator human shows no consideration for them. Still, why are the two species not as afraid of humans as other, apparently less dangerous, predators?
Environmental scientist Chris Darimont from the Canadian University of Victoria and Canadian environmentalist Ishana Shukla suspect that the study result may mean that animals in the Anthropocene are reaching the limits of their adaptability in an accompanying commentary in Science. Humans kill so quickly and effectively that there are too few survivors and evolution cannot keep up.