Joe Rogan on coyotes: what the evidence says · JRE #2262
SUBJECT: COYOTES
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
In San Francisco, it was like 50% of the problem cats that they caught, they found out their diet was pets. 50% of their diet was pets.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The most detailed San Francisco coyote diet study, led by UC Davis researcher Tali Caspi and based on DNA analysis of more than 700 scat samples collected across the city from 2019 to 2022, found domestic cats in only 4.5 percent of samples (32 detections), plus two guinea pigs, far below the 50 percent figure cited. That study analyzed scat from the general coyote population, not specifically captured problem animals, and its dominant diet items were human-linked chicken (72 percent of samples) and natural prey such as pocket gophers (57 percent). Even studies in regions with much higher cat predation do not approach 50 percent: a Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area study of Los Angeles coyotes found cat remains in about 20 percent of urban scat, and Southern California stomach-content research put cats at roughly 8 percent of urban coyote diets. No San Francisco or Bay Area study supports the claim that pets made up 50 percent of any coyote group's diet, so the figure is substantially overstated.