Technologies

A Coyote Unexpectedly Killed a Human in 2009. Scientists Now Know Why

It’s likely due to an unexpected dietary adaptation.

In 2009, 19-year-old folk singer Taylor Mitchell was attacked by a pack of coyotes while on a hike at the Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Canada. She was just about to start the popular Skyline Trail when climbers in the area saw the animals close- in, unprovoked.

Onlookers called 911, and Mitchell was airlifted to a hospital in Halifax, but 12 hours later, she died from her injuries.

This marked the very first documentation of a coyote attack in North America that resulted in a human adult fatality (in 1981, 3-year-old Kelly Keene was killed by a coyote on her family’s property), raising questions about whether it’s no longer safe to co-exist with these furry mammals.

«We didn’t have good answers,» Stan Gehrt, a professor in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources and leader of the Urban Coyote Research Project, said in a statement.

But after conducting a multi-year investigation into the incident, Gehrt appears to have offered some insight into the situation at last.

According to a paper published last month in the Journal of Applied Ecology, he along with a crew of wildlife researchers found that coyotes in the region of Mitchell’s attack have adopted an unusual dietary change. Rather than rely on smaller mammals like rodents, birds and snakes for food, they seem to be hunting moose for their meals due to extreme climate conditions forcing the former to move away.

As such, the team believes it’s possible these coyotes learned to attack larger mammals, like humans, and are therefore more prone to killing people.

«We’re describing these animals expanding their niche to basically rely on moose. And we’re also taking a step forward and saying it’s not just scavenging that they were doing, but they were actually killing moose when they could. It’s hard for them to do that, but because they had very little if anything else to eat, that was their prey,» Gehrt said. «And that leads to conflicts with people that you wouldn’t normally see.»

Coyote forensics

Before and after the 2009 tragedy, Gehrt’s project noticed a few dozen less-severe human-coyote incidents in the park as well. He and colleagues even fitted them with what are basically GPS trackers so they could document the animals’ movements and better understand why they were behaving in such surprisingly vicious ways.

«We had been telling communities and cities that the relative risk that coyotes pose is pretty low, and even when you do have a conflict where a person is bitten, it’s pretty minor,» he said. «The fatality was tragic and completely off the charts. I was shocked by it — just absolutely shocked.»

To arrive at their conclusions — that coyotes in Cape Breton National Park were feasting on large moose – the team first collected whiskers of both the coyotes implicated in Mitchell’s death and those related to other more minor incidents between 2011 and 2013. They then collected fur from a wide range of potential coyote prey such as shrews, southern red-backed voles, snowshoe hare, moose and even humans — for humans, they gathered hair from local barber shops.

Seth Newsome, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and corresponding author of the study, performed an analysis of specific carbon and nitrogen isotopes within all the samples.

Eventually, Newsome confirmed that, on average, moose constituted between half and two-thirds of the animals’ diets, followed by snowshoe hare, small mammals and deer, according to the press release. Plus, the researchers analyzed coyote droppings, which confirmed the isotope findings further.

Interestingly, they also only found a few examples of individuals having eaten human food, debunking any claims that coyotes’ attraction to human food might’ve been a factor in Mitchell’s attack.

«These coyotes are doing what coyotes do, which is, when their first or second choice of prey isn’t available, they’re going to explore and experiment and change their search range,» Gehrt said. «They’re adaptable, and that is the key to their success.»

From those movement devices, the team tested to see whether coyotes in the park were just familiar with people. However, patterns showed that the animals largely avoided areas of the park frequented by people. Instead, they preferred walking around at night.

«The lines of evidence suggest that this was a resource-poor area with really extreme environments that forced these very adaptable animals to expand their behavior,» Gehrt said. Or as the paper puts it, «our results suggest extreme unprovoked predatory attacks by coyotes on people are likely to be quite rare and associated with unique ecological characteristics.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, May 17

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 17.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword has a goofy shape, but it’s pretty easy to solve. 6-Down mystified me, but the other answers helped me fill it in. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: «Link in ___» (promotional catchphrase on social media)
Answer: BIO

4A clue: They’re ground in a coffee grinder
Answer: BEANS

6A clue: Bike riders’ headwear
Answer: HELMETS

8A clue: Variety of tomato whose name is also a meat
Answer: BEEFSTEAK

10A clue: Shoe spec that describes this puzzle?
Answer: EXTRAWIDE

11A clue: «Cha-ching, nothin’ to it!»
Answer: EASYMONEY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Church spot where bats hang out
Answer: BELFRY

2D clue: The first three words of «Green Eggs and Ham,» straight from the narrator
Answer: IAMSAM

3D clue: Boxing punch combo
Answer: ONETWO

4D clue: Purple slices in a salad
Answer: BEETS

5D clue: Oktoberfest glass
Answer: STEIN

6D clue: Prefix with decimal, in coding
Answer: HEXA

7D clue: One-named hit singer with 1985’s «Smooth Operator»
Answer: SADE

8D clue: Spelling ___
Answer: BEE

9D clue: Paper with the answers
Answer: KEY

How to play more Mini Crosswords

The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

Technologies

I’m Putting Apple AirTags in Every Suitcase I Own, and They’re on Sale Now at Amazon

I track everything from keys to cars using Apple AirTags. And now that you can get a four-pack for almost $20 off at both Amazon and Best Buy, it’s a good time to stock up.

I knew something was wrong as I stood at the baggage carousel after a return flight from France and my trusty rolling suitcase was nowhere to be seen, even as my fellow passengers collected their bags one by one. My suitcase never did drop onto the carousel that day.

However, I knew there was no reason to panic. Before handing over my suitcase at check-in at the Charles de Gaulle Airport, I had tucked a sophisticated little tracking device into it. So, with just a few taps on my iPhone, I could see that my bag had apparently never left Paris. (Merde!)

Over the years, I’ve come to rely on Apple’s AirTags to keep track of just about all my easy-to-lose valuables. They’re not only good for suitcases; I also use them to track keys, bikes and even my car. I tell everyone who will listen that you can never have too many of these handy devices. That’s why I think it’s worth taking full advantage of sales at both Amazon and Best Buy that slash the price of a four-pack of AirTags down to $80.

Here’s how the Apple AirTag that was in my suitcase on that fateful trip works. It uses an ingenious method of tracking itself, detecting its location from nearby iPhones and using them to anonymously piggyback the coordinates to a secure server where I could look it up on my iPhone. Until just a few years ago, this would have seemed like a scene straight out of a spy movie.

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Instead of wondering if my belongings were stuck on an abandoned luggage cart or strewn across the tarmac, I could see in almost real time that my suitcase was still chilling at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I was able to calmly tell the airline my bag didn’t make the flight, and it made arrangements to have it delivered to me a few days later.

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Apple AirTags are all about peace of mind

By itself, an AirTag isn’t much. A 1.26-inch smooth round puck that looks like a glossy white breath mint, it sinks to the bottom of a bag or dangles from a key chain (with a compatible key ring, sold separately). It’s meant to disappear.

Activating the AirTag was a simple process of pairing with my iPhone. And then, because it obviously doesn’t really do anything out of the box, I forgot about it.

But the next time I couldn’t find my keys? Sorcery. My iPhone didn’t just tell me they were somewhere nearby — it walked me directly to them, thanks to the AirTag’s built-in Ultra Wideband chip. Suddenly, all that time I’d spent retracing my steps and overturning couch cushions in the past felt like ancient history.

Now I have AirTags in or attached to every significant item I’d want to keep track of: My everyday laptop bag, my camera backpack, the suitcase I use most when traveling, my key chain, my car and a smaller sling bag I take on walks. I can pull up the Find My app on any of my Apple devices (or sign in to iCloud on any web browser) and see where my items are and the last time the AirTags registered their locations.

AirTags aren’t just for my everyday items. People I know in the movie business tell me that AirTags are tossed into nearly every bag and Pelican crate, not solely to ensure that the valuable equipment inside doesn’t walk away but to quickly differentiate equipment amid similar looking containers. Some of my friends also attach AirTags to their pets’ collars (though experts say there are better ways to track pets).

AirTags are also useful for things that you want to keep close by

Being able to detect my luggage a continent away provided a sense of relief, to be sure. But at the local level, my AirTags will also trigger an alert when I get too far away from them. For example, if I accidentally forget my camera bag in the car when I stop somewhere for lunch, a Find My notification appears telling me I’ve left it behind. It works the same for newer AirPods models as well.

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Sharing is now a big part of AirTag tracking

My family has two cars, and I wanted to be able to track them both. But it used to be inconvenient to pair the AirTag in the car my wife drives to her iPhone (and the one in my car to my iPhone).

To guard against unwanted tracking, an AirTag will notify nearby iPhones of its existence, so whenever I drove my wife’s car without her in it, I got a notification that an AirTag was traveling with me. (If the owner is near the AirTag, the alert does not appear.)

However, ever since the release of iOS 17, AirTags are shareable, which solves this problem. I shared my AirTag with my wife, and she with me, so regardless of which car I’m driving, I can find it more easily in a crowded parking lot without getting constant, unnecessary alerts.

A new feature to AirTags that arrived with iOS 18.2 is the ability to temporarily share an AirTag’s location with someone I trust. In my luggage example above, if the suitcase was in the airport with me, but the airport’s staff hadn’t yet been able to locate it (not uncommon during peak travel times), I could share its location with an attendant who could quickly retrieve it from areas inaccessible to the public.

Apple AirTag specs

Diameter: 1.26 inches (31.9 mm)
Height: 0.31 inches (8 mm)
Weight: 0.39 ounces (11 g)
Splash, water and dust resistance: Rated IP67 (maximum depth of 1 meter up to 30 minutes)
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0
Battery: Replaceable CR2032 coin cell battery

The only minor annoyance about AirTags

An AirTag includes Bluetooth, the U1 Ultra Wideband chip and an NFC chip to share basic details when it’s in Lost Mode. That’s all powered by a CR2032 coin cell battery, which in my experience lasts roughly a year before I need to replace it.

I get notified when a battery is starting to get low, although there’s no gauge to see how much is left until it goes into the red. And it’s easy to change batteries. But my small fleet of AirTags means I need to swap multiple ones each year. I buy them in packs of 20 that I slowly work through.

AirTags also make great gifts

Apple AirTags consistently appear in our gift guides throughout the year because you can always find another use for one. They’re often reduced in price when sold in packs of four. And there’s an ever-growing ecosystem of ways to mount them, from sturdy vaults that adhere to a car to discrete fabric holders that will keep your favorite classic bomber jacket from flying away. Whenever I show someone how I use AirTags on a bag or keychain, I kind of wish I had a pocket of AirTags to hand out because once someone sees how it works, they’re sold.

Looking to save on more things that’ll make your life easier? Check out our roundup of all the best early Memorial Day deals going on now. We’ve also gathered all the best AirTag accessories of 2025 from across the web so you can get the most use out of them.