[unsettling music] - [Narrator] The story of the coyote is also the story of how nature adapts.

- Coyotes originally were only in the Western United States.

They were in sort of open habitats, deserts, prairies, and things like that.

And then in the 1900s, we killed all the wolves in the eastern forests, and coyotes started moving in and are now pretty much everywhere in North Carolina.

- [Narrator] As cities and towns grow, that means there's a lot less forest and open area for animals to live in.

So, species must adapt and learn to survive in those fragmented landscapes.

Coyotes are leaving the woods.

- Coyotes are one of the most adaptable species on the planet.

What we see in North Carolina is when they first got here, they sort of filled up all the natural habitats and outta the more rural areas.

And now that they sort of filled that up, we see them starting to move more and more into urban areas.

- [Narrator] The coyote is not only adaptive, it's also competitive.

And that can be a loss for other species.

- And some of the species that they compete with are similar to them, like foxes and bobcats.

And so, they're kind of enemies.

The coyote and the fox are basically archnemesis.

- [Narrator] As more coyotes move into urban areas, researchers at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences wanna understand their impact on gray foxes.

Gray foxes were in the woods first.

[inquisitive music] - We set up this big camera trap array to monitor wildlife from an urban to wild gradient.

Because we wanted to see not only where the species live along that gradient, but also how these two species, the coyote and the gray fox, were interacting.

So, was the gray fox avoiding the big mean coyote?

We found that in urban areas, they were basically both coexisting, although coyotes were much more rare.

In rural areas, if there was enough tree cover, they coexisted.

Where there was no tree cover or lower tree cover, there would be only coyotes.

So we think this tree cover might be a really key factor that helps them coexist.

And part of that might be because of the fox's ability to climb trees.

We call sometimes the gray fox the cat-like fox, or the cat-like canid, because they have semi-retractable claws, and they're, basically, one of the only canids that's able to climb trees.

And we think this might help them avoid the coyote.

- [Narrator] Researchers say the key to preserving both the native gray fox and the non-native coyote, lies in the habitat that humans leave for both of them.

- So if we wanna help these two species coexist, which they can, we really need to keep the tree cover.

So it means preserving forest that we already have and maybe reinforcing areas that have lost some of that tree cover.

[thoughtful music] - [Narrator] But if the forest habitat continues to be lost, pushing coyotes more and more into urban areas, owners of small pets will have something else to worry about.

- Coyotes are a decent-sized predator, and it's not only the foxes that they bully or can potentially prey on, it's also other species.

And in some ways, it's a good thing 'cause it sort of maintains the balance of nature.

But on the other hand, if you let your cat outdoors, the coyotes are real risk.

And we are seeing in our neighborhood, as the coyotes have increased in the last couple of years, more and more lost cat signs.

- [Narrator] One cause of that increased risk is offering food to wild animals.

- Feeding wildlife, like the bigger mammals, is usually something you wanna avoid doing because you might be attracting something like a coyote, which could start causing problems for you or for your neighborhood.