Coyotes live in forests, grasslands and deserts, and even in cities. As of November 2026, the Urban Coyote Research Project estimates that 1,500 to 2,000 coyotes may live in Cook County, Illinois. Scientists put GPS collars on coyotes to see where they go.

Scientists call coyotes very adaptable animals, and they say coyotes have adapted well to places that people have changed. Around 1920 they began spreading across North America, and over the last hundred years or so they have spread east. In 2010 they crossed the Panama Canal, moving into Central America.

A coyote is about four to five feet long from the nose to the tip of the tail. Around Chicago, most adult coyotes weigh between 25 and 35 pounds, although a few weigh up to 42 pounds.

A coyote can run up to 65 kilometers per hour. It can also jump distances of up to 4 meters.

A coyote has a keen sense of hearing. When snow covers the ground, a coyote can hear small animals moving beneath it and pounce to catch them. For small prey in general, a coyote springs up in the air and pounces.

A coyote's molar teeth are made for crushing, while its canine teeth are rather long and slender. A coyote will eat almost anything it can find. It eats fruit as well as meat, and it also eats animals that are already dead, which is called carrion.

How do scientists learn what city coyotes eat? They look at scats, the droppings coyotes leave behind. In the Cook County project, researcher Paul Morey examined 1,429 scats. Ninety percent of a coyote's diet is mammals. In a study of Cook County, Illinois, small rodents were the main food of city coyotes. City coyotes do sometimes eat food that people leave out, such as trash.

The Cook County study produced numbers on survival. 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.

Not every coyote lives with others. In the Cook County study, between one-third and one-half of the coyotes studied each year were solitary, which means they lived alone. Solitary coyotes travel over large areas, up to 60 square miles, covering many municipalities. The space one of them roams, its home range, averages 10 square miles (26.8 square kilometers).

Many coyotes do live with others. Coyotes often live in pairs or in family groups, and they are less likely to form packs than wolves are. Coyote packs in Cook County average less than 2 square miles (4.95 square kilometers) and reach as much as 4.3 square miles (11.1 square kilometers). Coyote mates may stay paired for a number of years, but not necessarily for life.

Coyotes mate in late winter, and pups are born about two months after the parents mate. They make dens in burrows, often ones that another animal dug first. Coyote pups are born blind, with floppy ears. A litter ranges from 1 to 19 pups and averages 6. Pups are fully weaned by 35 days and are fed by both parents.

Coyotes are the most vocal of all North American wild mammals, using three distinct calls. They make many different sounds, such as howls, yips and barks. Coyotes howl to tell other coyotes where they are.

Words to know

• adaptable: able to change
• carrion: dead animals
• scats: animal droppings
• solitary: living alone
• weaned: off mother's milk