A few winters ago, I was running on the lakefront after sundown when I noticed another runner loping my way. This one was on all fours, silvery in the winter moonlight. Warily, we circled each other, then kept going in our respective directions.

It was my first Chicago coyote sighting, but not my last. Like many other Chicagoans, I’ve spotted a few coyotes out in the daylight at Graceland Cemetery. I was surprised to see creatures I assumed were nocturnal, but Mason Fidino , quantitative ecologist at the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo, said that’s not entirely accurate.

Fidino studies how animals change their behavior according to their environment, especially when their environment contains humans. In Chicago, he and his colleagues at the zoo monitor one hundred or s

See Full Page