How do coyotes live so close to people? Coyotes live in forests, grasslands and deserts, and even in cities. As of November 2026, the Urban Coyote Research Project in Cook County, Illinois, is based on more than 20 years of research by Dr. Stanley D. Gehrt and his team. Scientists put GPS collars on coyotes to see where they go.

In natural areas, coyotes tend to be active in the day or at dawn and dusk, but in Chicago they confine most activity to the night. In the Cook County study, coyotes in urban environments switch their activity to be more active at night, when human activity is minimal.

A separate study of 62 species found that mammals were 1.36 times as nocturnal when people were nearby. Eighty-three percent of the case studies in that analysis showed some increase in night activity when people were around.

In the Cook County study, coyotes as a general population consistently avoided areas associated with humans. In natural habitat fragments, coyote home range boundaries usually follow the borders between parks and the development around them.

Gehrt tabulated that vehicle collisions accounted for 70 percent of the Chicago coyote deaths he counted, as reported in 2006. Urban coyotes in Illinois typically live less than two years, with vehicle collisions the most common cause of death. Biologist Stan Gehrt says coyotes in Chicago definitely learn how to cross roads.

In the Chicago area coyotes generally have a 60 percent chance of surviving one year. Juvenile coyote survival in Cook County is about five times higher than the 13 percent reported for rural juveniles.

A study published in 2024 used tracking data from 214 coyotes in the Chicago area between 2013 and 2021 to see what affects how long city coyotes live. The Chicago study found a positive link between coyote survival and human population density.

A 2021 conference study compared city coyotes from Greater Los Angeles with rural coyotes from Fresno County. It found trends toward wider snouts, longer skulls and a stronger molar bite force in city coyotes, though the differences were not statistically significant.

In a study in Edmonton, Alberta, city coyotes consumed more human-related food than rural coyotes. The Edmonton study linked an urban diet to poorer average body condition in coyotes.

In the Cook County project, researcher Paul Morey examined 1,429 scats to learn what coyotes eat. Ninety percent of a coyote's diet is mammals, and small rodents were the main food of city coyotes. City coyotes sometimes eat food that people leave out, such as trash.

Between one-third and one-half of the coyotes studied each year in Cook County were solitary. Solitary coyotes travel over large areas, up to 60 square miles, covering many municipalities, and their home ranges average 10 square miles.

Coyotes began spreading across North America around 1920, and they crossed the Panama Canal in 2010, moving into Central America.

One Chicago coyote pair raised their young a few yards from where children were playing. Biologist Stan Gehrt says coyotes that were born and raised in cities prefer cities. Coyotes have adapted well to places that people have changed. Scientists call coyotes very adaptable animals.

Words to know

• nocturnal: active at night
• solitary: living alone
• scats: animal droppings
• significant: clearly meaningful