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Information Content Of Coyote Barks Howls, Brian R. Mitchell, Maja M. Makagon, Michael M. Jaeger, Reginald H. Barrett

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The information content of coyote (Canis latrans) vocalizations is poorly understood, but has important implications for understanding coyote behavior. Coyotes probably use information present in barks or howls to recognize individuals, but the presence of individually-specific information has not bean demonstrated. We found that coyote barks and howls contained individually specific characteristics: discriminant analysis correctly classified barks of five coyotes 69% of the time and howls of six coyotes 83% of the time. We also investigated the stability of vocalization characteristics at multiple distances from the source. Recordings were played back and re-recorded at 10 m, 600m, and …