Before we could proceed with a captive coyote study, we had to first find a litter of pups to raise. Because of our companion ecological study of wild coyotes, we wanted to raise pups from that same population. This will make it possible to make cross-inferences between the two studies. For instance, researchers suspect that interactions amongst littermates is the major reason causing coyotes to disperse. The thought that the adult pair forces the young off has never been substantiated. Therefore, observations of our litter may allow us to extrapolate which coyotes might disperse first from a group.

So, where did we obtain our coyotes from?

Initially, we were planning on simply tracking one of our radio-collared females, finding her den and removing pups for the study. The literature indicates that wolf and coyote pups need to be taken before they are 3 weeks (21 days) of age in order to socialize or bond with people. By tracking and locating our radio-collared females we were able to ascertain dates of localizations around a den site and to approximate whelping dates within a day or two. Thus, the plan was to pinpoint the females daily and 18 days after localization to go in and take the pups (in order to give ourselves a day or two before the 21 day critical period).

But...Before we did that we wanted to see if there were alternate means to obtain pups. We thought the chance would be very small but wanted to explore our options in order to see if there might be a litter on Cape Cod that was discovered and there was a problem associated with it. Well, amazingly, with the aid of communicating with MassWildlife and the Falmouth Department of Natural Resources and Animal Control divisions, we learned of a coyote that denned under a shed in the middle of downtown Falmouth.

At first I didn't believe them and figured it was just a coyote digging nearby, but when I approached the site on April 12, 2002 with a MassWildlife representative and Falmouth personnel, there was an adult female coyote sleeping, literally in someone's backyard. When we approached the shed, the female stayed and barked at us. While all radio-collared coyotes have ran from us (even when the entire group of 3-4 adults was at a den site) this coyote circled us for the entire 1+ hour that we were there - clearly, this coyote was habituated and unafraid of humans.

Den was in the top right of the shed (see the slight hole)

Falmoth Animal Control and DNR with a pup

Me and the runt (named Late). She was nearly starved to death when found, hence, in my opinion, a win-win situation: Save a starving pup and remove pups from a problem situation (i.e., a coyote habituated to people - however, despite being habituated to people the mother had never caused a problem around people.

We put the recovered pups in the window sill at the house where we dug; we dug around and under the entire shed and ended up finding 9 pups (3 male; 6 female) in total. We took 5 of the pups (including two underweight pups, Trans and Late). The remaining 4 were put back under the shed. Besides the two small pups, we held each pup and subjectively guessed which pup appeared less timid of the 7 - we took the 3 less timid pups. The mother was seen moving the remaining 4 pups to a more wooded (but still within 100 m of houses, just literally not in a backyard) area at midnight.

The one problem with this litter of pups was that they were already an estimated 24-25 days old (3 1/2 weeks) on April 12 based on body size and tooth development. Because the literature says you need to get them before 3 weeks of age, I was very hesitant to take them. However, seeing the condition of Late and Trans (the 2 smallest out of the 9) I decided that I couldn't turn my back on these guys. In addition, I like to try and prove people (and the literature) wrong.

This puts the pups being born around March 18 (April 12 minus 25 days old). That is the earliest that I have yet documented for pups being born on Cape Cod. However, it was a very mild winter certainly making it more hospital to have pups then - however, there were still many cold days after March 18 making it a marvel how those little pups survived.

It is amazing to think that we now have 5 pups (2 male; 3 female) at the Stone Zoo, but there are still (reported by Falmouth DNR) 4 pups from that same litter alive. Wow, would it be neat to capture some of those pups and compare their morphological development to our captive coyotes.

Click here to read about the pups at my house.

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