- Combined with the region’s species records, thousands of camera-trap images captured in the last 15 years show that, with each passing year, coyotes are pushing their way into territory they’ve never trod through before. In the three years following 2015, they expanded their range by at least 120 miles—a faster pace than the average rates they’ve clocked in up north.
And our southern continental neighbor is already sending another species back our way: the crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous), another hardy, opportunistic canid that Kays calls the “coyote of South America.” Native to the continent’s savannas and woodlands, this dog-sized carnivore scampered into Panama for the first time in the late 1990s, and has continued its northerly campaign ever since.
Converging on the Central America corridor from opposite directions, the coyote and the crab-eating fox now share habitat for the first time in recorded history. Should both press on at their current rates, the two species will soon trickle into each other’s original territories, executing a cross-continental predator swap that hasn’t happened in the Americas in at least three million years.
If any of you wanna get a better look at these guys, iNaturalist has way better photos than Wikimedia. They got some genuine character. Fair warning though, interspersed in the observations are some deceased specimens. Also, I'm not real good with how geography works. Where is the cut off between North and South America? Cause looking at the map, it seems to me they're right at the tippy top of the South American continent, but I might be wrong.