It's Monday, September 17th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gantis.

And I'm Kishar Hari. Each week, we bring in a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collides.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

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podcasting app. So how do you pronounce the name of a wolf-like creature that is generally yellow-ferred and you often see in cities?

Are we talking about the type of animal that we've seen in Looney Tunes cartoons for a long

time? Whose first name might be Wiley. Okay. I would say coyote. Yes, that's exactly how I would

pronounce it. But did you know that half of the country pronounces it completely differently?

Oh yeah, yeah, coyote. Yeah. And that that half of the country thinks that this

beautiful animal is vermin. Verman? Really? Like, it's an actual pest. That it's a pest and something that we should

shoot. Well, I know that coyotes are hunted oftentimes, but I never thought that that hunting was done at

much of a scale. Yeah, no, apparently

it's like a major call, but the coyote is so well adapted to living amongst human beings that

it just continues to survive as a species. We actually have one that lives right near my house

in the big park by my house. The other day I got up,

I think it was like six in the morning. It was pretty quiet out. Coyote comes just marching down

the hill of my street, walking in the middle of where traffic would be, just prancing along,

going back into the park. Yeah. And when it comes to a wild animal living in an urban environment,

coyotes are often what we see.

I mean, they're pretty common. And amazingly, they have adapted like human beings to virtually every environment in North America.

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