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Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

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Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#161

Post by gerdesj »

baybal2 wrote: post #18
simonw wrote: post #7

The first time I saw a Coyote was in broad daylight up on Corona Heights in San Francisco. I'd never even seen a photo of one before, but I knew what it was straight away because its face looked like Wile E Coyote!

A disturbing story I heard when living in Russia in my childhood was that if you see a wild animal in the city, it means that beasts have ran out of trash and waste to eat, and are getting more riskier, and you shouldn't be coming close to them unless you want to be eaten.

You have some rather bigger beasties running around in Russia than I'll ever see here.

I live in a small town in the SW of England, UK called Yeovil pop. 45,000. We have loads of foxes and badgers. Foxes seem roughly comparable to a coyote. I regularly see foxes here and not just in the parks. I do live rather close to a lot of park as well as the town so that helps.

Sadly the badgers in Somerset seem to be suicidal and shoot themselves before jumping over hedges into a road. That's before, during and after an official cull to try and avert TB in cattle. Science ... lol.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#164

Post by bdamm »

soared wrote: post #138
froindt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me about stories of people trying to record nature untouched by man-made sounds. It has become increasingly difficult to find locations which are purely nature. I wonder how much easier it has become since the number of people generating "work noise" has fallen so much? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/24/machine-...

Maybe in Europe, but in the US there is a ridiculous amount of untouched space a <20 miles from almost every major city with the exception of California and the north east.

Standing on a mountaintop in Yosemite, I could easily hear the airplanes above, one approximately every few minutes.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#165

Post by koheripbal »

subsubzero wrote: post #139
spodek wrote: post #135

What we think of wild nature is nothing compared to what used to exist. Schools of fish so dense they would bring boats to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. North America had more large wildlife than Africa. Whales as far as the eye could see all day long. Walruses in the Thames in London. I did a couple video essays on what I learned from a wonderful book The Once and Future World : My video essays: https://yout…

What amazed me was after reading Unbroken (WWII novel set in the pacific) was the incredible amount of sharks in hawaii and the surrounding islands. A family member who was in the pacific theatre backed this up. Shark schools so dense that sailors would be attacked after they fell in. This was barely 70 years ago so alot has changed in terms of animal population.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-worst-shark-attac...

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#166

Post by 40four »

This is really cool! (but not unexpected) On the east coast, there is a species called ‘Coywolves’. They are a hybrid of pure coyotes and timber or grey wolves.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf

They are known to be incredibly smart and stealthy. They are adept at adapting to, and living in urban environments.

Like domestic dogs, they understand line of sight, as in, they are keenly aware of what direction a person is looking. This helps them remain unseen, while surviving in very close proximity to humans.

We know coyotes are living in virtually every corner of the US at this point. I wonder if these are pure bloods, coywolves that have migrated to the west coast, or maybe a new hybrid or sub species?

PBS Nature has an amazing documentary describing the Coywolf. Check it out if you have PBS Passport!

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/860...

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/meet-the-coywolf-infographic...

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#167

Post by paulmd »

jtaillon wrote: post #151
soared wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in Europe, but in the US there is a ridiculous amount of untouched space a <20 miles from almost every major city with the exception of California and the north east.

Surprisingly, this isn't really true (as far as noise is concerned). Noise pollution travels far, and if you're using sensitive equipment, you can easily pick up the noise of planes flying nearby at 30,000 ft.

This is in fact how airplanes were detected before radar was invented. Not a joke.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/aircraft-detection-radar-19...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_location

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#168

Post by _jal »

yters wrote: post #156
_jal wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you both overstate human understanding of ecological systems and desire to maintain them. Humans mostly tend to radically reshape local ecosystems for their own ends, at times collapsing them. Aside from some very local remediation successes here and there (which are more repair jobs than preservation), I'm unaware of any evidence that humans have "recognized, anticipated and averted" any of note. Do you have…

Farming and agriculture is ecological creation on a grand scale, and responsible for much of human flourishing, along with the animals and plants we cultivate.

Agriculture is an activity, not an ecosystem. Humans are but one element of the ecosystems in which they exist, and their flourishing is relevant only insofar as it preserves systemic viability.

Farms are inherently unstable - the 'system' is missing. From an ecological perspective, they're no more an ecosystem than you'd get if you released a bunch of random animals in your house. You'd have a new 'system' that lasts until they die.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#169

Post by jessaustin »

philwelch wrote: post #112
jessaustin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems really unlikely. That is, it's like the reciprocal of the Drake equation, multiplied by some additional infinitesimal factors.

If you assume humans are not unique in the universe, you're immediately confronted with the Fermi paradox. If the universe is filled with sapient life, wouldn't some of that sapient life be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us--a tiny amount of time on the astronomical timescale, but more than enough for them to be observable in some way? Ultimately we're left with the unsatisfying task of speculating without e…

It could be that life at our current level is more observable to life at our current level than more advanced life would be. The "Dark Forest" hypothesis from 三体 would be one explanation, but even that isn't required. It could be that advanced life can better meet its needs via technology that we can't sense. That was certainly plausible before we could broadcast over the electromagnetic field, which wasn't so long ago. Perhaps it is still plausible, because we're still missing out on something important.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#170

Post by dredmorbius »

RandallBrown wrote: post #41
phaser wrote: post #23

Here in Santiago, Chile, where many neighborhoods are in complete lockdown, a wild Puma was seen roaming the streets[1]. This was their natural habitat before the city was established, and many of them still live in the mountains, which are not far from the busiest streets of Santiago. https://www.france24.com/en/20200324-wild-puma-captured-in-d...

Seattle has occasionally gotten mountain lions and bears in the city. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/discovery-parks-co...

Similarly Palo Alto, for years now: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2004/05/17/mountain-lion...
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