Are those coyotes real?
Tonya recently posted on “the sound of cackling and shrilling and chattering and maniacal howling” of coyotes. In her post she included a link to the sounds of coyotes.

I played the sounds for my wife and she thought that they did not sound real. So I decided to put the sounds to the ultimate test: I called our dog into my office. He usually does not react to the sounds of animals on the computer or television unless they are definitely real. Once the local news had a kitten for adoption on its weekly adopt-a-pet segment. The anchor was holding the kitty right by his microphone and it was meowing incessantly. This drove our dog nuts. He circled the television trying to figure out just exactly how the cat had gotten inside. Most of the time, however, the animal sounds go unnoticed (probably because they are not real).

In my office, I played the coyote sounds for him. Judging from his somewhat alarmed, distressed, and confused look as he tried to figure out where those sounds were coming from, I would conclude that the sounds are very real.

Mind you he has had encounters with coyotes. He has chased them away from my mother’s home in California. He also marked the area around the house to keep them away, which worked pretty well for it wasn’t until about a year later that coyotes started showing up again.

I always find it fascinating how animals manage to communicate with each other.