Twelve photographs of the coyote (Canis latrans) from iNaturalist
Ten that meet the search-image, and two that do not.
Photographs 1 to 10 each show an adult, whole and unobstructed, with the tail visible to its tip; standing or walking in clean profile or square to the camera; in direct light; sharp at full resolution; naturally coloured; and wild, with no collar, ear tag or visible injury. The background in every one is plain — tarmac, snow, bare ground, short grass or open sky.
Ranking by favourites is a blunt instrument for this purpose. The community rewards behaviour and drama — a coyote carrying prey, a coyote among elephant seals, a coyote on the Golden Gate — whereas the search-image asks for the plain standing portrait that few photographers bother to post and fewer still favourite. That is why so few of 1,597 photographs survived. Bursts of near-identical frames, of which there were many, were treated as weak throughout.
Photographs 11 and 12 are the two that were set aside, kept here for the record. In 11 the animal stands square to the camera on a bank against an empty sky, and everything about it is right except that the tail is hidden behind the body, so it fails the requirement that the tail be wholly visible. Number 12 is a melanistic coyote on plain snow — whole, sharp, well lit and against nothing at all — but a black coat shows no pattern, and in clean profile only the one eye reads; it is a striking animal rather than a representative one.
