Mystery of First Adult Human Fatality by Coyote Attack in Canada Solved by Study on Dietary Shift

Since it occurred in 2009, the reason why a coyote attack on an adult human ended in death was a mystery. Recent research indicates that a change in the coyote diet is what caused the incident.

Taylor Mitchell, a 19-year-old folk singer, was attacked by a pack of coyotes in 2009 while out hiking in Canada's Cape Breton Highlands National Park. She was about to begin the well-known Skyline Trail when nearby climbers noticed the animals getting close and unprovoked.

Mitchell was helicoptered to a hospital in Halifax after witnesses called 911, but 12 hours later, she passed away from her wounds.

First Coyote Attack on Adult Human

The fact that this was the first instance of a coyote attack in North America to result in the death of an adult human raises concerns about whether it is still safe to coexist with these furry mammals.

Stan Gehrt, a professor at Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources, stated that they had no convincing explanations for why this occurred. Gehrt is also the leader of the Urban Coyote Research Project. But Gehrt appears to have finally provided some explanation for the incident after undertaking multi-year research into it, Ohio State News reports.

Dietary Shift to Larger Mammals

In a paper, he and a group of wildlife researchers claim to have discovered that coyotes in the vicinity of Mitchell's attack have unusually changed their diets. Because extreme climate conditions drive the former away, they appear to be hunting moose for food rather than relying on smaller mammals such as rodents, birds, or snakes.

The team surmises that these coyotes may have acquired the ability to attack larger mammals, such as humans, and are consequently more likely to kill humans.

Gehrt said that these creatures are being described as expanding their moose dependence. Additionally, their group is moving forward and claiming that they were not only scavenging but also occasionally killing moose. Coyotes find it challenging to hunt humans, but because they had little else to eat, if anything, they were forced to do so.

Unexpected Coyote Conflicts

The Gehrt project discovered a few dozen less serious human-coyote incidents in the park both before and after the 2009 tragedy. To track the animals' movements and learn more about why they were acting in such surprisingly vicious ways, he and his colleagues even fitted them with devices that are essentially GPS trackers.

According to him, communities and cities are informed that coyotes pose a relatively low risk and that even when a person is bitten, the damage is usually minimal. The fatality was tragic and completely out of the ordinary, though. Gehrt declared that he was utterly stunned.

The team first collected whiskers from both the coyotes involved in Mitchell's death and those connected to other, less serious incidents between 2011 and 2013 to reach their conclusions, which were that coyotes in Cape Breton National Park were preying on large moose. Then they began gathering fur from a variety of potential coyote prey, including shrews, snowshoe hares, southern red-backed voles, moose, and even people. For human fur, they obtained it from neighborhood barbershops.

Read also: Putting Coyotes on Endangered List Could Save Rare Gray Wolf Species From Illegal Killings 

Coyote Diets

The study's co-corresponding author, Seth Newsome, a biology professor at the University of New Mexico, examined specific nitrogen and carbon isotopes in each sample.

According to the press release, Newsome ultimately determined that deer, snowshoe hare, small mammals, and moose made up the majority (between half and two-thirds) of the animals' diets. The isotope results were further supported by the analysis of coyote droppings, which was done by the researchers.

Interestingly, they only discovered a small number of instances of people consuming human food, disproving any theories that Mitchell's attack may have been motivated by coyotes' attraction to it.

Gehrt said that when their first or second option of prey isn't available, these coyotes do exactly what coyotes do, which is to explore, experiment, and alter their search area. Their success is largely attributed to their adaptability.

The team examined the movement of the coyotes in the park to determine whether they were simply accustomed to people. But patterns revealed that the animals largely avoided the parts of the park where visitors congregated. They preferred to stroll around at night instead.

Gehrt said that according to their paper, the findings show that coyote attacks on humans without provocation are likely to be quite rare and are linked to specific ecological traits, CNET reports. Their paper was published recently in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

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