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As the sunset colors fade from purple to black an eerie sound breaks the forest calm. It is not the long, low, slow howling of wolves that can be heard further north, but the group yip-howl of coyotes: short howls that often rise and fall in pitch, punctuated with staccato yips, yaps, and barks.
- See more at: http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/03/coyotes-decoding-yips-barks-howls.html#sthash.9pH7OFq9.dpuf
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Coyotes: Decoding Their Yips, Barks, and Howls
As the sunset colors fade from purple to black an eerie sound breaks the forest calm. It is not the long, low, slow howling of wolves that can be heard further north, but the group yip-howl of coyotes: short howls that often rise and fall in pitch, punctuated with staccato yips, yaps, and barks.
When people hear coyote howls, they often mistakenly assume that they’re hearing a large pack of animals, all raising their voices at once. But this is an auditory illusion called the “beau geste” effect. Because of the variety of sounds produced by each coyote, and the way sound is distorted as it passes through the environment, two of these tricksters can sound like seven or eight animals.
Group yip-howls are produced by a mated and territorial pair of “alpha” coyotes, with the male howling while the female intersperses her yips, barks, and short howls. “Beta” coyotes (the children of the alpha pair from previous years) and current year pups may join in if they are nearby, or respond with howls of their own. And once one group of coyotes starts howling, chances are that any other alpha pairs nearby will respond in kind, with chorus after chorus of group yip-howls rippling across the miles.
I spent seven years studying coyote vocal communication during my dissertation research at the University of California. While eastern coyotes are a larger and distinct subspecies from the western coyotes that I worked with, the basic findings of my research and the work done by others applies to all coyotes. Coyotes have sometimes been called “song dogs,” and their long distance songs come in two basic types.
The first, the group yip-howl, is thought to have the dual purpose of promoting bonding within the family group while also serving as a territorial display. In other words, the coyotes are saying “we’re a happy family, and we own this turf so you better keep out.” In a sense, the group howls create an auditory fence around a territory, supplementing the physical scent marks left by the group.
Coyotes will also howl and bark separately. This second type of song is virtually always an indication of disturbance or agitation, and in my experience, the higher the proportion of howls, the more agitated the coyote is. Coyotes will howl and bark at neighbors who intrude on their territory, and at dogs, people, and other large animals that they perceive as a potential threat.
My research documented that coyote barks and howls are individually specific. Much like we can tell people apart by their voices, there is enough information in coyote vocalizations for me (OK, my computer if you want to get technical) to tell individuals apart. If, as I suspect, coyotes can distinguish each other by their song, it would not be analogous to the animals constantly shouting their own names; it would be more akin to our ability to recognize Marlon Brando because of the distinctive timbre and cadence of his voice. Characteristics including dominant pitch, duration, how quickly howls rise and fall in pitch, and tendency to “warble” while howling all distinguish one coyote from another.
For howls, this individual distinctiveness does not fade with distance. I was able to record and identify individual coyotes over a distance of greater than one mile. Given their keen hearing, it is likely coyotes can discern individual howls at much greater distances —three miles or more on a calm night.
Barks, on the other hand, degrade quickly over distance, with the higher frequencies fading first. This makes it theoretically possible for coyotes familiar with an individual (say, a mate or family group member) to determine roughly how far away that individual is, based on the proportion of high frequencies in the barks.
Barks, on the other hand, degrade quickly over distance, with the higher frequencies fading first. This makes it theoretically possible for coyotes familiar with an individual (say, a mate or family group member) to determine roughly how far away that individual is, based on the proportion of high frequencies in the barks.
Imagine a scenario where a lone coyote is patrolling the territory boundary and comes across an intruder. He starts barking and howling, and his mate and beta children come running to the right place because his howls indicate how agitated he is, and his barks allow his family to pinpoint the direction and distance to his location. Although I was not able to prove that coyotes can do these tasks, the information needed is present in their calls and there are strong evolutionary advantages to learning how to use it.
We still have much to learn about coyote vocal communication. Even after years of studying coyote calls, I was barely able to scratch the surface.
You can listen to the wide range of coyote sounds at Soundboard.
Brian Mitchell is an adjunct professor at the University of Vermont. Now that he has kids, that grad school schedule of getting up at 2 AM for field work sounds pretty relaxing. The illustration for this column was drawn by Adelaide Tyrol. The Outside Story is assigned and edited by Northern Woodlands magazine and sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: wellborn@nhcf.org
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Scientists Need Your Help to Decode the Secret Language of Wolves
Welcome to the world of canine crowdsourcing.
The Candid Howl Project, an international collaboration of biologists, behaviorists, sound experts and others is encouraging people to analyze thousands of recordings of dogs, dingoes, coyotes and wolves in the safety of their own homes. The nonprofit International Wolf Center recently asked its nearly 70,000 Facebook followers to volunteer.
western coyote
The information gathered will provide clues to the meaning of each type of howl, such as defense of territory or preparation for hunting.
The research might benefit endangered gray wolves, common targets of ranchers. “We are hoping…to identify clear differences between howls of different ‘meanings,’ ” Arik Kershenbaum of the University of Cambridge and the project’s creator, said in an email.
For example, how does a territorial howl differ from a group-cohesion howl.
“If we could do that, it would be possible to develop active deterrent techniques to keep wolves away from ranches by playback of ‘appropriate’ recorded howls,” he said.
Volunteers are asked to listen to recordings online while viewing a spectrogram, or graphic image of the sounds, and then use their mouse to trace the strength and pitch of each howl. Every recording is heard by several volunteers, to ensure consistency among their analyses.
Why enlist the public?
“When we have many thousands of calls recorded, it would take a very long time to go through each one separately,” said Kershenbaum. “The human brain is the best pattern recognition system we know of, so it seems a natural solution to use multiple and unbiased humans to categorize the howls.”
Another goal is objectivity. “As researchers intimately involved with the project, we have to be very careful not to categorize the data subconsciously in a way that might affect the results,” he said.
The recordings were collected in the wild and at zoos—in addition to homemade recordings of domestic dogs, which owners can upload on the website.
The four wild species being analyzed are:
Gray wolves, which were almost hunted to extinction but are making a comeback.
Red wolves, rare North American animals with a population of 100 and listed as critically endangered. In 2013, 10 percent of the population was killed by hunters who mistook them for coyotes.
Coyotes, which are ubiquitous across North America and frequently hunted as pests. But as the only large predator in many regions, they play a crucial role in balancing ecosystems.
New Guinea singing dogs, a dingo similar to domestic dogs. Their 5,000-year isolated existence on Papua New Guinea has created unusual behaviors, especially their melodic “singing.”
Kershenbaum said the research could aid conservation.
“Uunderstanding the [vocal] behavioral difference between these closely related species can help us assess genetic isolation and hybridization,” he said.
Hybridization is a serious threat to red wolves, which breed with coyotes. “It would be useful to know whether the howls of the different species could act as a behavioral barrier to interbreeding,” Kershenbaum said.
So why study dogs?
“They largely bark rather than howl,” Kershenbaum conceded. “But some feral and ancestral dog breeds, such as dingoes, have more complex vocal behavior. Studying this can help us discover more about the process of the domestication of dogs.”
As for wolves howling at the moon, Kershenbaum called it more of a “legend” than a distinct behavior.
“Having said that,” he added, “examining how howling behavior changes under different environmental circumstances is definitely within our remit.
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