Fighting patterns in young coyotes: Initiation, escalation, and assessment

Abstract

The fighting patterns of young coyotes were studied and 2,350 fights were analyzed. Our results can be summarized as follows: 1) No major injuries were sustained by any of the infants, even in unritualized bouts. 2) In pairs, there was no relationship between social rank and the proportion of fights that were initiated by either animal. 3) Dominant animals were more likely than subordinate individuals to escalate first (perform the first unprovoked dangerous move) during short interactions and to escalate and then subsequently win short fights. 4) Highest‐ranking (alpha) individuals in litters did not fight the most. 5) Alpha individuals initiated 73% of the fights in which they partook. Alpha coyotes initiated and then won 86% of the contests that they initiated. 6) For fourth‐ranking coyotes in litters, there was a perfect positive correlation between the proportion of times that they initiated fights and the proportion of times that they initiated and then won encounters. They initiated interactions least with the first‐ to third‐ranking animals. 7) Alpha and fourth‐ranking animals escalated about the same proportion of the time, but alpha coyotes escalated and then won a greater proportion of fights. 8) Both alpha and fourth‐ranking animals initiated and then escalated the greatest proportion of time with individuals nearest in rank, with whom they may have experienced the greatest difficulty in assessing relative social standing. 9) Our data suggested that individuals, especially in litters, were able to make pre‐fight assessments but that they were not perfect with respect to this ability. During‐fight assessments appeared to be easier to make, using escalation to test an opponent.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Agonistic Behaviour in Juvenile Crocodilians

“…Inflating the body and opening the mouth to signal aggressive intent and raising the head high to indicate submission are postures used by several species of sub-adult and adult crocodilian [22] [18] . Many species of birds [36] , mammals [1] [2] , and fish [37] [38] will also raise or inflate their body and open their mouth wide during agonistic interactions in an attempt to intimidate their opponent.…”

“…Agonistic behaviour plays an important role in determining access to resources such as food, shelter and mates, and in establishing dominance status in a wide range of mammals [1] [2] , birds [3] [4] , fish [5] [6] , reptiles [7] [8] , amphibians [9] [10] , and invertebrates [11] [12] . Agonistic behaviour is often present shortly after birth or hatching, and can vary widely in terms of the nature and ontogeny, both within and among species [13] .…”

Social Ecology and Behavior of Coyotes

“…Although young coyotes interacted similarly to captive pups among whom clearly defined dominance relationships were established (Fox and Clark, 1971;Bekoff, 1972aBekoff, , 1974Bekoff, , 1977cBekoff, , 1978bKnight, 1978;Bekoff et al, 1981b), we could not gather enough information to make any general statement concerning the development of social status under field conditions. The robustness of data concerning the development of dominance relationships among very young pups raised in a variety of captive settings, and the similar patterns of social interaction that we observed around dens, leads us to conclude that dominance relationships among wild littermates may well be established very early in life, as they appear to be in some populations of red foxes (Henry, 1985; but see Garrott et al, 1984).…”

Two's company? Solitary vixens’ motivations for seeking social contact

“…Intriguingly, the number of social play bouts was highest in the pair where the test subject paid the lowest relative price for contact, suggesting that reinforcing properties of play may indeed be reduced for adults, perhaps because play sequences include competitive elements that may escalate into aggression (e.g. Bekoff et al, 1981). Overall the difference between adult and sub-adults suggests that housing sub-adults may be more beneficial than socially housing adults.…”