Coyotes have a lot to teach us about who we are. They remind us that, like them, we are both predators and prey: that our lives are had at the expense of other lives, whether plant or animal, and that we too are a part of nature.

To learn more about them, I talk with Chris Nagy of Gotham Coyote Project, a consortium of scientists and volunteers that studies coyotes in New York City, one of the last coyote frontiers.

Nagy tells me about how they use heat-sensitive cameras and radio collars to track coyotes, as they make a life for themselves in the Bronx, in parks and a golf course and, occasionally, show up in Central Park or trotting along the West Side Highway. We discuss the family life of coyotes and what happens when coyotes and humans interact.

As they continue to live alongside us, coyotes remind us that nature isn’t “out there”; it is everywhere. A simple truth that should be obvious and, yet, somehow, isn’t, in our human-centered culture.