Many people believe that urban coyotes primarily eat garbage and pets. Although coyotes are predators, they are also opportunistic and shift their diets to take advantage of the most available prey. Coyotes are generally scavengers and predators of small prey but can shift to large prey occasionally. The most common food item for coyotes is small rodents. Through necropsy (post-mortem evaluations), scat investigation, visual observation, and high-tech science, it seems the majority of coyotes in our study area do NOT, in fact, rely on pets or garbage for their diets.
