Watch: Playful coyote excited to pal around with a badger

Coyotes in my neighborhood usually kill unsupervised smaller animals like cats and dogs (or in my case, chickens), so it's fascinating to see this frisky coyote buddy up with a badger. It looks genuinely excited as it waits for its friend to catch up so that they could trot through a pipe together.

Apparently badgers and coyotes have been known to hunt together. From Peninsula Open Space Trust on YouTube:

We know from scientific studies and Native American records that coyotes and badgers have been known to hunt together. But this is the first documentation (that we know of) where a coyote and badger use a human-made structure to travel together safely.

This video was captured recently as part of our research to better understand how wildlife moves across the southern Santa Cruz Mountains. We have more than 50-remote sensor cameras helping us capture scenes like this which we use to inform our land conservation work.