S2E5: Amplified Coyotes

In this this episode we talk about coyotes. Also known as song dogs and tricksters, coyotes have impressive vocal repertoires. This season Hannah Hunter joins Claudia as the co-host of The Animal Highlight, teaching us all about “Animals and Sound.” This season was extracted from Season 4 of The Animal Turn Podcast. 

 Featured: 

• S4E05: Animal Music with Martin Ullrich on The Animal Turn.
• (Re)Storying the More-Than-Human City: Urban Coyotes in Canada by Lauren van Patter. 
• Coyote vocalizations: A lexicon and comparisons with other canids by Philip N. Lehner. 
• Chorus Howling by Wolves: Acoustic Structure, Pack Size, and the Beau Geste Effect by Fred Harrington. 
• Do You Hear What I Hear? Human Perception of Coyote Group Size by Kyle Brewster et al. 

 Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, producer and host 
• Hannah Hunter, co-host
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Sponsor:

• Thank you to the sponsors of the fourth season of The Animal Turn podcast, “Animals and Sound,” where this animal highlight was originally aired 15 December 2021. 

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

The Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory
The SAP Lab provides workspace and equipment for students engaged in sound related activities.

Sonic Arts Studio
The Queen’s Sonic Arts Studio (formerly Electroacoustic Music Studio) was founded in 1970.

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The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:15 The Song Dog
• 5:17 Tricksters and the Beau Geste Effect
• 9:53 Credits

Transcript

00:00 - Introduction 

• Welcome to Season 2 of The Animal Highlight. 
• This season is focused on “Animals and Sound” and was extracted from Season 4 of The Animal Turn Podcast (Episode with Martin Ullrich).
• This season I am joined with a co-host, Hannah Hunter. A PhD Candidate in Geography at Queen’s University and a member of the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory.
• This episode looks at coyotes.  

01:15 – The Song Dog

•  Claudia saw her first coyote recently. 
• Our colleague at Queen’s University, studied coyotes. 
• One of the names for coyotes is “the song dog” because they have elaborate repertoire of vocalizations. 
• They have complex sounds that they make – Lauren van Patter discusses in her dissertation how coyotes are considered the most vocal North American mammal. She lists their different vocalizations and how they have been typified by science. Examples of that are a growl, a huff, a puff, a woof, a bark, a bark-howl, a whine, a yelp, a lone howl, a group yip howl, and the list goes on. Including a warble and a garble. 
• The sound that coyotes are most known for is the group yip howl.
• This sound usually happens when they reunite, or they separate before they go hunting. According to Philip Lehner, a coyote sound researcher, the group yip howl is about territory, keeping trespassers away, and social bonding.

05:17 – Tricksters and the Beau Geste Effect 

• In addition to be known as the song dog they are also known as tricksters. This is partly because of the Beau Geste Effect.
• First proposed by Fred Harrington, the beau geste effect was hypothesized in relation to birds and later mammals.  
• It is this effect where you feel like you are hearing a lot more of the animals than there actually are. There might only be two coyotes doing the group yip howl but it could sound like there are five or six of them. 
• The name Beau Geste Effect comes from a fictional book where people are at war and they prop up their fallen soldiers to make it seem as thought they are alive so that the people thy are fighting against feel like there are more than there actually are. 
• They are considered to be tricksters because people think thy are deliberately using these sonic tactics to come across as more commanding. We don’t certainly know if this is deliberate or if it is trick of the environment. 
• This effect was tested by Kyle Brewster and colleagues in 2017 where they played recordings of howling coyotes and they found that people consistently overestimated the number of coyotes they thought they heard, by at least two-fold. They did this study with captive coyotes which might make it seem that it is not a trick of the environment but rather how coyotes stitch together these different vocalizations. 
• People have a fear of coyotes that is potentially not justified and this is partly because people overestimate their numbers because of this effect. 

09:53 - Credits

• Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics for sponsoring The Animal Turn Podcast.
• Thank you also to the Sonic Arts Studio and the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory who were sponsors for the fourth season of The Animal Turn podcast that was focused on “Animals and Sound” where these animal highlights were extracted from. 
• A big thank you to Hannah Hunter for co-hosting this season of The Animal Highlight
• Co-hosted by Claudia Hirtenfelder and Hannah Hunter. 
• This episode was produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and edited by Christiaan Mentz. 
• The logo and episode artwork were created by Rebecca Shen. 
• Show notes compiled by Claudia Hirtenfelder