Citation:
Breck, S.W., Poessel, S., Mahoney, P. et al. The intrepid urban coyote: a comparison of bold and exploratory behavior in coyotes from urban and rural environments. Sci Rep 9, 2104 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-38543-5
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This article titled "The intrepid urban coyote: a comparison of bold and exploratory behavior in coyotes from urban and rural environments" explores key differences in the behavior of urban coyotes versus the behavior of rural coyotes. The lead researcher of this article is Nature.com scientific researchers. Nature.com is the world's leading multidisciplinary science journal. This article was published in February 2019 through Nature.com's site. The experiment conducted in this article attempted to analyze the differences in behavior of urban and rural coyotes. To do this, the Flight Initiation Distance (FID) technique cautiously approached radio-collared animals to gauge their reaction and distance upon initiating movement, followed by statistical analysis employing linear mixed modeling and ordered logistic regression to explore variables like region and vegetation cover. The results showed that flight initiation distances varied depending on factors such as the region (rural vs. urban) and the density of vegetation cover. This indicates that coyote behavior is influenced by environmental factors such as urbanization and vegetation cover. Coyotes in both rural and urban settings exhibited different responses to stimuli like novel objects. The main idea of the study is to differentiate between behavior of urban and rural coyotes since urban coyotes have become so prevalent. This article connects to the other ones I found for this week in that it describes why urban coyotes are special, and thus why they should be researched and protected.