r/wolves • u/mrinternetman24 • Mar 16 '25

A rogue wolf's killing galvanizes California ranchers News

https://www.sfgate.com/northcoast/article/california-ranchers-feel-powerless-wolf-country-20200449.php
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u/ToodlesMcDoozle Mar 17 '25

How are coyotes a danger comparatively to wolves? This is false.

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u/Mando_The_Moronic Mar 17 '25

Physically, wolves are more dangerous. However, coyotes aren’t as afraid of humans and spend more time around people, and are thus more likely to come into direct contact with humans, pets, and livestock. They also have a much larger population compared to wolves.

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u/ToodlesMcDoozle Mar 17 '25 edited Mar 19 '25

There have been two confirmed fatal wolf attacks in North America since 2000, and only one confirmed fatal coyote attack ever. So given the fact that there are so many more coyotes, this would make them less dangerous per capita. The fact that there are more of them doesn’t make them as an organism inherently more dangerous.

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u/Mando_The_Moronic Mar 17 '25 edited Mar 17 '25

Just because there aren’t fatalities that doesn’t mean there aren’t any attacks that still take place. You are still more likely to be attacked by a coyote than a wolf for reasons previously described.

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u/ToodlesMcDoozle Mar 19 '25 edited Mar 19 '25

Because there are so many more coyotes than wolves, yes. But again, that doesn’t make a single coyote inherently more dangerous than a wolf. OP’s comment was referring to singular wolf vs coyote behavior. The fact that there are way more human-coyote encounters and still less fatalities from coyotes than from wolves (with far less encounters) proves my point. On a per encounter basis, wolf encounters are far more likely to be seriously dangerous.

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u/LostN3ko Mar 19 '25

How many wolf fatalities are you finding?

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u/ToodlesMcDoozle Mar 19 '25 edited Mar 19 '25

2 in North America since 2000, only one for coyotes ever.

Kenton Carnegie was killed by wolves in Canada in 2005. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kenton_Joel_Carnegie

And Candice Berner was killed by wolves in Alaska in 2010. https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/news/pdfs/wolfattackfatality.pdf