Dan Flores: Coyote

Dan Flores is American historian. Explore interesting quotes on coyote.

Dan Flores: 38 quotes0 likes

“The ancestral canids that would eventually produce coyotes sprang from North American stock, a line of animals that evolved in the American Southwest. That ancient coyote line spawned animals that migrated to Eurasia and eventually to Africa to become Old World jackals. In North America, archeological sites from the late Pleistocene have yielded coyote remains from as far east as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and genetic evidence indicates that coyotes thronged eastward out of their core range in the American West in at least two swarms, roughly between three hundred and nine hundred years ago. The truth is, roaming coyotes have probably been swimming the Mississippi River to eastern America during most decades since there have been coyotes.”

Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

“Chaco unquestionably had coyotes in town; coyote bones are common in the archeological sites of the inner city.”

p, 125
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

“Across the history of life on Earth, animals and birds of many species have routinely colonized new country. That's enough a marker of adaptive success that biologists apply the term "cosmopolitan" to species that are especially flexible regarding… habitats… Evolving in America, the ancestors of horses spread across Asia, Europe, and Africa, where they became zebras and quaggas. Bovine evolution in Southeast Asia eventually brought bison to North America… But the range expansion of a wild animal [i. e., the coyote] for thousands of miles in every direction, often through dense settlements of humans who in recent history have been committed to that animal's eradication, is truly remarkable. A suite of factors must be involved.”

Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

“[T]he truth is that coyotes have never been solely wilderness creatures. …for the 15,000 years since we humans have been in North America, coyotes have always been capable of living among us. …A coyote's primary prey happens to be… the mice and rats that flourish around and among us… By the time Europeans got to America, coyotes had long since sought out the major Indian cities of Mesoamerica.”

Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

“A thousand years later we still use a form of the original Aztec name… coyotl, pronounced COY-yoht, accent of the first syllable… Their rich mythology produced numerous coyote gods… Huehuecoyotl, or "Venerable Old Coyote"… sounds so much like the widespread North American god-avatar… that the empire-minded Aztecs may have borrowed him from tribes far northward…”

Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

“Southwestern Hispanos… have long said that the only thing smarter than a coyote is God.”

p, 125
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

“In one of the myriad ways humans and coyotes eerily mimic each one another, like us coyotes are cosmopolitan species, able to live in a remarkable range of habitats.”

p, 125
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)