You'll recognize a coyote running with its tail held down between its hind legs, though sometimes you will have to look quickly because coyotes can run up to 40 miles per hour. In the shrub-steppe, coyotes usually dig their own dens, but occasionally they enlarge an old badger hole or use a natural hole in a rocky ledge. Coyotes bear one litter of from three to nine pups per year, and the female raises the pups primarily alone. These little wolves communicate by howling many times across wide canyons. You may recognize this high-pitched yap.
Coyotes also have very keen senses of smell and hearing.
This, coupled with a cunning evasiveness, enables the coyote to thrive both in wild and suburban areas. Food studies have shown coyotes' principal diet to be deer, rabbits, ground squirrels, other small rodents, insects, fruits, and berries. Although coyotes have been observed killing sheep and other livestock, domestic animals are not the first choice for these mammals. But, because they have been known to have a domestic brunch or two, they have been labeled a nuisance. Many coyotes have been killed to keep the risk down.