The coyote, or Canis latrans, is a species of wild canine native to North America that has successfully colonized nearly every habitat type across the continent. Its broad geographical range, extending from Central America to Alaska, is a direct result of its exceptional adaptability. This animal’s ability to thrive in diverse environments, from arid deserts to dense forests and suburban parks, is fundamentally linked to its highly flexible diet. The coyote is considered the quintessential generalist predator, capable of shifting its food sources based on local and seasonal availability.
Primary Food Sources by Category
The foundation of the coyote’s diet is built upon opportunism, meaning its specific menu changes constantly depending on what is easiest to acquire in a given location. Small mammals consistently form the bulk of the coyote’s natural prey, including rabbits, hares, and various rodents like mice, voles, and ground squirrels. Coyotes are highly effective at regulating these small animal populations, with rodents and lagomorphs often making up more than half the dry weight of prey found in scat analysis.
Plant matter is a significant component of the coyote’s omnivorous diet, especially during warmer months. Fruits and berries provide substantial seasonal nutrition when they ripen, with coyotes readily consuming apples, plums, grapes, and wild berries. They will also eat grasses and various seeds, demonstrating a capacity to process vegetable matter that is reflected in their dentition.
Insects and invertebrates become seasonally important, particularly in the summer when they are abundant and easy to catch. Coyotes will consume grasshoppers, beetles, and crickets, often filling a dietary gap when other prey species are harder to find. This ability to switch to smaller, plentiful food items allows them to maintain energy reserves.
Scavenging for carrion is another reliable food source that coyotes utilize throughout the year. They consume the remains of larger animals, such as deer, elk, or moose, that have died from natural causes or road collisions. This behavior provides a substantial meal and serves an ecological function by helping to clear landscapes of dead animals.
Behavioral and Physical Adaptations for Foraging
The coyote’s hunting success is supported by a sophisticated set of physical traits and learned behaviors that maximize energy return for effort expended. While often hunting alone, coyotes employ a cooperative hunting strategy when pursuing larger prey, such as deer, or when the density of the prey population allows. They also occasionally engage in an unusual, highly efficient partnership with the American badger, where the badger digs for burrowing animals while the coyote waits above ground to intercept any prey that flees. This interspecies alliance significantly increases the hunting success rate for both carnivores.
Food caching is a common behavior that allows coyotes to save excess food for later consumption, ensuring that no kill goes to waste. When a coyote is satiated after a large meal, it will dig a small depression, deposit the food item—often an entire small mammal—and use its snout to cover it with soil in a process called tamping. Coyotes scatter these cache sites and rely on a strong memory to relocate the buried food days later.
Coyote physiology is perfectly suited for a generalist lifestyle, beginning with specialized dentition. Unlike the teeth of more specialized carnivores, the coyote’s molars feature larger chewing surfaces, enabling the animal to efficiently process a mixed diet of meat, bone, and tough plant fibers. Coyotes also possess highly developed senses of smell and hearing, which are essential for locating small, hidden prey, especially during nocturnal foraging.
Their physical build contributes to their foraging prowess, with long legs and a slender, athletic structure allowing them to reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. Coyotes are digitigrade, walking on their toes, which enhances their speed and agility across varied terrain. This combination of speed and sensory acuity allows them to be effective hunters, whether they are pouncing on a mouse or chasing a rabbit.
The Impact of Urban Environments on Coyote Feeding
The coyote’s adaptability is most clearly demonstrated by its ability to exploit the food resources found in human-dominated landscapes, leading to a specialized urban diet. Coyotes living in metropolitan areas significantly increase their consumption of anthropogenic foods, which are items directly associated with human activity. These include improperly secured garbage, fast-food wrappers, and pet food left outdoors. Studies using stable isotope analysis have indicated that a substantial portion of some urban coyote diets, sometimes up to 38 percent, is derived from the corn-based food chain that forms the base of many processed human foods.
This shift in diet also involves a greater reliance on ornamental plants and domestic produce found in suburban gardens. Coyotes have been observed consuming ornamental fruits like ficus and loquat, as well as various garden vegetables. The availability of these concentrated, predictable food sources often leads to a higher population density of coyotes in urban areas compared to rural environments.
This change in feeding habits inevitably increases the potential for conflict with human residents. Predation on domestic animals, specifically outdoor cats and small dogs, becomes a noticeable issue in urban and suburban settings. The presence of these human-derived food sources draws coyotes into neighborhoods, where competition or threat responses can trigger aggressive interactions with domestic animals. Controlling access to these unnatural food sources is the most effective way to reduce human-coyote conflict.