Alcatraz prisoners once risked the treacherous waters of San Francisco Bay to escape from the island’s maximum security prison. Now, for the first time, a clever coyote has been photographed swimming the other way, all the way to Alcatraz Island.
Video posted on social media shows a coyote (Canis latrans) paddling to the southern tip of Alcatraz Island as the sun sets over the bay. The coyote then struggled against the island’s rocky shoreline, visibly shaken and exhausted.
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“There’s a reason people have a hard time making that swim,” Gehrt told LiveScience.
The videos were taken by an unidentified person who visited the island on January 11 and later shared the footage with Aidan Moore, a guest relations employee at Alcatraz City Cruises, who alerted park rangers, San Francisco news website SFGATE reported.
“Coyotes are common in parks in San Francisco and Marin, but they have never been seen on Alcatraz Island,” Golden Gate National Recreation Area spokesperson Julian Espinoza told SFGATE. “This was the first time our park biologists had observed something like this.”
Coyotes are intelligent, versatile creatures who can swim. Gehrt said he has seen coyotes swimming in Chicago-area lakes as part of the Urban Coyote Research Project, a long-term research program.
“In some cases, they prefer to swim across the lake rather than run around it,” Gehrt said.
But Gehrt usually only sees coyotes swimming a few hundred yards in relatively calm lake conditions, a far cry from the waters around Alcatraz Island. The island is located in the middle of a cold estuary with strong currents, which is one of the reasons Alcatraz was considered the perfect location for the now-defunct prison.
It is estimated that some prisoners drowned while trying to escape from the island, which is more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the mainland. Today, humans swim recreationally, with the help of wetsuits, training, and guides.
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It is unknown how the coyote arrived on Alcatraz Island. The video begins with the animal already in the water and no sign of where it came from. But Gehrt thinks the coyote must have had a tough journey. “Once it came out of the water, it certainly looked like it had been swimming for a long time,” he said. “No animal I’ve seen before swim out of the water and look as distraught or tired and exhausted, so it was clearly a pretty extensive swim.”
KCRA 3 television station previously reported that the coyote was filmed swimming to Angel Island, another island in the bay where coyotes have lived since 2017. Angel Island is closer to the mainland coast than Alcatraz Island. However, Angel Island is north of Alcatraz Island, so although they are closer to the mainland north of the Golden Gate Bridge, coyotes on Angel Island have to swim farther to reach Alcatraz Island than coyotes on the San Francisco mainland south of the Golden Gate Bridge.
SFGATE reported that the captain of Alcatraz City Cruises told Moore about unusual currents in the bay, likely caused by recent storms. The coyote may have been swept away during a short swim and ended up near Alcatraz Island.
Gehrt said coyotes don’t always enter the water voluntarily. They sometimes use it as a means of escape from territorial humans and other coyotes. But Gehrt also speculated that the coyote may have been motivated by opportunities, such as food resources or potential territory.
Coyotes were once confined to the prairies and deserts of midwestern North America. But in the 1800s, humans encouraged its expansion by creating more open habitat through logging and agricultural development, and by hunting competitors such as wolves and cougars.
As humans occupy more and more land, coyotes have become more common in cities. Their flexible nature and diet now help them thrive not only in parks and golf courses, but also in cities like San Francisco, where they prefer habitat fragments of trees and shrubs.
Conservation scientist Christine Wilkinson, who has studied Bay Area coyotes at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the California Academy of Sciences, told SFGATE that the coyote in the video was likely trying to establish its own territory.
Wilkinson suspects the coyote came from the Coit Tower herd on the mainland south of Alcatraz Island. Coit Tower has little green space for coyotes to live in. Additionally, coyotes wishing to disperse south of Coit Tower would face Interstate 280 and risk being run over by cars, so going to the water’s edge may have seemed like a safer option.
Coyotes typically seek new territory in the fall and early winter, but Wilkinson said it’s not unheard of for that to happen in January. Coyotes are also currently in breeding season, which runs from January to March.
No sightings have been reported since the swimming coyote was filmed arriving at Alcatraz Island. Wilkinson told SFGATE that although the coyotes look “pretty vulnerable,” he added that coyotes are “incredibly resilient.” Wilkinson also pointed out that the island is rich in food for coyotes, including eggs, chicks, rats and mice.
Coyotes live in small family groups consisting of an alpha male, alpha female, and their relatives. According to the Urban Coyote Research Project, solitary coyotes are typically young individuals of either sex, between 6 months and 2 years old, who are trying to find another group or establish their own territory. Gehrt has documented coyotes traveling more than 150 miles (240 kilometers) across southern Ohio as part of their natural dispersal, including crossing the Ohio River.
“This speaks to this animal’s ability to overcome a variety of challenges and its ability to explore and take advantage of every opportunity it can find,” Gehrt said.
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