Speculation grows around Dean Karnazes’s coyote attack

Last weekend at the Headlands 150-mile Endurance Run in Sausalito, Calif., acclaimed ultrarunner Dean Karnazes posted on Instagram and Twitter after being attacked by a coyote while pulling an energy bar from his backpack in the middle of the race. The story spread widely, but after a wildlife expert weighed in, the running world became skeptical about whether it really happened. (Warning: graphic content)

Karnazes’s story

On Aug. 12, Karnazes shared a video on his social media of the night lights along San Francisco’s Golden Gate Strait and the Bay Area. Karnazes filmed a panoramic view while he said in the background, “I’m running the Headlands 150-mile foot-race in Marin County, and if you’re wondering why anyone would do such a thing, maybe this view will give you the answer.”

Later that evening, Karnazes was back on Instagram and Twitter sharing a video of himself bloodied and in shock, claiming that a coyote lunged at him while he was pulling out an energy bar on the trails. “I was attacked by a coyote–that was a first,” Karnazes said. “It knocked me over; I was running with poles, thankfully, and I whacked it, and it ran away.”

I’ve been attacked by a shark and now a coyote. Both incidents were terrifying.#animalattack #survivalmode pic.twitter.com/nKtH1mU0LO

— DeanKarnazes (@DeanKarnazes) August 13, 2022

Karnazes chuckled nervously and looked around. “I am not sure what I’m going to do, but I guess I gotta keep going, or else it’ll probably come back for me.” 

The 59-year-old did not complete the race. Since the incident, Karnazes has avoided the subject on social media, other than another post a few days later warning people not to feed coyotes.

Karnazes did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

Seeds of doubt

An Aug. 17 article in San Francisco’s SFGATE questioned the veracity of Karnazes’s story, pointing out that a park ranger reported that Karnazes admitted his facial injuries were from falling; the animal did not bite him in the face. National Park Services spokesperson Julian Espinoza told Young, “It would not be accurate to refer to the encounter as an attack.”

The verified Golden Gate National Park Association later tweeted: “We want to emphasize that the injuries shown were caused by a fall. The coyote did not bite the individual involved in this encounter.” This may or may not have been intended to spark doubt about whether Karnazes was attacked, but it put to rest multiple suggestions that he get rabies shots.

While we appreciate the coverage on this, we want to emphasize that the injuries shown were caused by a fall. The coyote did not bite the individual involved in this encounter. https://t.co/cfpaLyok38

— Golden Gate National Recreation Area – Alerts (@GGNRANPSAlerts) August 16, 2022

Espinoza also said that the National Park Services (NPS) ear-tags coyotes that are in the area, and from those tags, the NPS had not turned up any information about the Karnazes incident.

Camilla Fox, a wolf and coyote expert with nonprofit Project Coyote, also doubted Karnazes’ tale. The runner told the San Francisco Chronicle that he reported that he “heard the coyote snarling above him.” For coyotes, a snarl is “not one of their known vocalizations,” according to Fox. Peter Alagona, a trail runner and environmental historian at the University of California Santa Barbara, had this to say about the incident: “Even the scariest wild animals act, for the most part, fairly passively toward people. The majority of wildlife attacks involve animals that are sick or injured, or have come to associate humans with food, or act in self-defence.”

Wildlife attacks on runners happen, but they are rare, and coyote attacks are even rarer. According to CNN, there are only two recorded incidents of coyotes killing humans, one of whom was a three-year-old child and the other was a 19-year-old folk-singer in Nova Scotia; however, the CBC reported there were, for example, 45 reports of coyotes biting humans in Vancouver’s Stanley Park between December 2020 and August 2021–possibly as a result of humans trying to them (or of other humans trying to feed them). 

Only Karnazes knows what really happened on that Marin County trail, but he has, understandably, gone silent on the issue.