On slicing open the stomachs of urban coyotes, researcher Scott Sugden has pulled out food scraps that might have come straight out of a garbage or compost bin, including a fully wrapped burrito. One time, he even found a leather glove.
“I can understand a pineapple. I can understand a burrito. I can understand a doughnut. But a leather glove?” said Sugden, a research assistant at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “There’s no nutritional value whatsoever.”
From Vancouver to Montreal, coyotes are increasingly being spotted in urban parks and neighbourhoods. And their junk food diet spells bad news for both the animals and the people they live alongside.
Coyotes that eat food discarded by humans tend to be unhealthy and may pose a health risk to humans since they carry more parasites and have gut bacteria linked to aggression, research by Sugden and University of Alberta colleagues found. Their study was published in the journal Scientific Reports last December.
There is also a greater risk of contact and conflict with humans as their poor health pushes them to seek out more food meant for human consumption instead of hunting rodents like mice and voles.
“Hunting an animal is work and requires energy, and so it’s difficult for a coyote to do if it’s unhealthy,” Sugden said.
That makes the coyotes more reliant on human compost and garbage, which in turn makes them less healthy and perpetuates a vicious cycle, he said.
Some of the items found in the stomach of a single coyote in the University of Alberta study. Clockwise from the left: a leather glove, a Tim Hortons wrapper, small fruits including cherry pits and a grape stem scavenged from a yard or compost or garbage bin, an apple, a rodent’s paw and some grass. (Scott Sugden/University of Alberta)
Keeping coyotes away from garbage is crucial
Coyotes have been in the spotlight in recent months amid reports of attacks on people and pets, raising questions over how city dwellers and their pets can live safely alongside the animals.
At least 15 people have been bitten or attacked by coyotes in Vancouver’s Stanley Park in recent months, and conservation officers have warned that some have become aggressive and bold because they’ve been fed by humans.
WATCH | Why coyotes are biting joggers in Stanley Park:
The Stanley Park Ecological Society explains the reasons behind the surge in recent attacks and what can be done to stop them. 3:38
Sugden’s research highlights the dangers of coyotes eating food meant for humans.
He examined nearly 100 urban and rural coyotes killed in the Edmonton area over the winters of 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 to see what they ate and how it affected their health. Coyotes don’t chew their food and instead tend to rip them and swallow whole, making it easy to identify what was eaten, he says.
The fact a coyote would swallow a glove was clearly a sign of desperation, says Sugden.
“He was hungry, and he wanted something to fill his stomach,” he said.
University of Alberta researcher Scott Sugden examines a coyote in a laboratory. He opened the stomachs of nearly 100 urban and rural coyotes to examine their diet and its impact on their health. (Scott Sugden/University of Alberta)
Sugden also looked beyond the contents of their stomachs — which only records their last meal or two — and looked at chemicals in the claws of the animals for insight on their diet.
The type of carbon and nitrogen found in the tissues is linked to diet. Higher levels of nitrogen-15 are linked to eating more protein, while higher levels of carbon-13 are often tied to consuming processed human foods containing corn-based ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch and maltodextrose.
Junk food diet linked to deadly parasites
Sugden’s analysis suggested urban coyotes ate 2.5 times more human food than rural coyotes, and 25 per cent less prey — consistent with the finding that there were fewer mice, voles, and chunks of deer in the stomachs of urban coyotes compared to those of rural coyotes.
There were also signs that the urban coyotes were in poorer health compared to their rural counterparts:
They had much less fat in their kidneys, suggesting they weren’t as well nourished.
They had 37 per cent larger spleens for their size, suggesting they had more challenges to their immune system.
They were 50 per cent more likely to carry the parasitic tapeworm E. multilocularis, which can cause a potentially deadly illness when transmitted to humans.
Dr. Emily Jenkins, professor and acting head of the Department of Veterinary Microbiology at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, has been researching the parasite for quite some time but was not involved in Sugden’s study.
“The irony is it actually has almost zero impact on coyotes’ health, but it has significant impacts for human health and for dogs,” she said.
E. multilocularis is a parasitic tapeworm found in coyotes. It’s harmless to coyotes, but in rare cases can cause a potentially deadly illness when the eggs are ingested by humans or dogs. ( Jenkins Lab/Zoonotic Parasite Research Unit/Western College of Veterinary Medicine)
If a dog or human accidentally eats the tapeworm eggs found in the feces of an infected coyote — something that’s relatively rare — the larvae form cysts in the liver.
“It basically behaves like a parasitic tumour and can spread and even be fatal without immediate and aggressive treatment,” she said.
Jenkins says while the parasite is rare, there has been an increase in reported cases in western Canada and southern Ontario — and the risk is enough to keep her from allowing her own dog off leash in either her own city of Saskatoon or in Edmonton, where she grew up.
The parasite tends to affect younger animals, and the younger age of the urban coyotes in the study might help explain why they had more parasites, she said.
On the other hand, she said the larger spleen suggested the urban coyotes might have more infections with other pathogens that the researchers didn’t look for.
Gut link to aggression?
For Sugden, the most interesting bit was the impact an unnatural diet had on the microbes that live in the gut of the coyotes.
In humans, those microbes, known as the gut microbiome, have been found to have an impact on health, behaviour and the immune system, and the same is true for animals, Sugden said.
He found that coyotes that ate more human food had more gut bacteria similar to those in humans than those that hunted more prey.
“For coyotes, this was bad news because this was correlated with other aspects of poor health,” he said.
There’s also some evidence it could be linked to more aggression by the animals.
Fusobacteria in the gut are linked to protein-rich diets and lower aggression in dogs, Sugden said. And one urban coyote in the study that killed a large domestic dog had no Fusobacteria in its gut at all.
“If we feel that eating human food has the potential to affect behaviour, [then we need] to address the root,” he said. “Then we reduce the likelihood of conflict. We reduce the likelihood of parasite transmission.”
Jenkins cautions against reading too much into links between different facets of the study since none were shown to cause each other. For example, the aggressive coyote mentioned in the paper may have been infected with a disease unrelated to its microbiome, she said.
However, she agreed that keeping coyotes away from human food is key to reducing risks to humans.
WATCH | Ottawa boy, 13, capturing urban coyotes on camera:
Last spring, 13-year-old Aidan Brown put up a handwritten sign to warn Linton Park visitors about the presence of coyotes. Now, with two new trail cams and an Instagram account, he’s raising even more awareness. 0:33
Are you feeding coyotes inadvertently?
Many cities, such as Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, already ban residents from feeding wildlife and threaten violators with fines. Edmonton isconsidering such a bylaw.
Securing compost and garbage bins to prevent inadvertent feeding is also important, says Sugden.
Pick ripe fruit and remove rotten fruit from the ground
Avoid having large amounts of bird seed on lawns as they can attract prey such as birds and rodents.
Sugden said excluding coyotes from cities isn’t practical, but the animals can be encouraged to remain in natural urban areas such as river valleys and hunt their regular prey.
Jenkins agreed that making human neighbourhoods less appealing for coyotes and controlling access to garbage is the most effective long-term solution. She said culling coyotes tends not to work, as the habitat “will refill almost immediately with new, needy, desperate young coyotes with exactly the same risk factors” such as tapeworm infections.
“We’ve got lots to learn about the wildlife and what that means for our health as well,” she said.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
