But are they becoming less rare?
"I'd characterize it as less rare than it used to be, definitely," said Niamh Quinn, an ecologist with the UC Cooperative Extension/Agricultural who is studying coyote interactions in Southern California. "We're seeing an increased frequency in bites (in Southern California) this year and last year."
Los Angeles County Public Health statistics also show a rise in coyote bites on humans countywide during the first seven months of 2016. Most recently, coyote attacks on three people forced a popular Montebello park and petting zoo to close down Tuesday.
Grant Rea Park in Montebello reopened to the public on Friday, said Andrew Hughan, information officer for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, after five coyotes were shot. At least one matched DNA samples taken from the victims, all of whom required hospital treatment.
"We're able to say with near certainty that we got one of the offending animals and we'll continue to test the other animals," Hughan said in a telephone interview Friday.
All of the victims suffered what were considered unprovoked attacks, although it was the third incident — a homeless man who was going through a park trash can on the night of Aug. 6 — who sustained the worst injuries and concerned wildlife officials the most.
"In my six years of experience, the first two I can understand," Hughan said.
In those July incidents, a 17-year-old girl was sitting on a low bench seat inside a gazebo when a coyote bit her ankle and made off with her flip-flop, which later was found covered with coyote DNA. The second attack was half a block away from the park on a man who was fixing a car and lying on the ground. He threw tools at the animal, which ran off.
"A coyote will look at anything from its eye level down as food. They're going to check it out," Hughan said.
"The third (attack) is the most interesting to us because this was a full-grown man, 5-8 or 5-9, who was awake and making lots of noise rooting through a trash can," he said.
The man suffered 19 puncture wounds in his leg in what Hughan characterized as a "very aggressive" attack. "I'd say that tipped the scales."
Quinn stresses that agencies need to be more proactive.
"If the (first) incident had been dealt with in July, then there wouldn't have been bites in August," she said.
Other attacks reported so far this year by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health included five cases in Lancaster, La Mirada, Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights and Pico Rivera.
Last year, 14 attacks were recorded in Los Angeles County — the highest since the department began keeping track in 2012. Most of them occurred in and around Elysian Park in the city of Los Angeles.
But because there is no central clearinghouse that keeps track of coyote bites on humans — and hospitals are not required to report them — it's unclear how many there actually are each year, according to Hughan.
"Realistically, there are probably many more," he said. The state agency, he said, receives "about a dozen or so (human) bite" reports in Southern California every year.
Going forward, more public education will be the cornerstone of any coyote program, he said.
"Education is what's going to keep people safe in this park," Hughan said of the Montebello incident. "The users of the park have to be responsible for themselves, keeping the trash picked up — all the pizza boxes and hamburgers and leftover soda cans."
While Hughan said there is no evidence the state's coyote population is growing — "We feel the numbers are fairly static," he said — the animals can become more habituated to people in urban settings, seeing them not as a threat but as food providers. And that, in turn, can give rise to more human-coyote conflicts.
The stats she's collected in her research show a trend of human bites that's moving upward, Quinn said.
"I have 24 bites in Southern California last year and that's almost a two-fold increase from 2001, which was the highest year between 1973 and 2003," Quinn said. "That's a big, big increase."
Comparing coyote bites to the much higher numbers of dog bites every year — often cited to make the point that coyote attacks are rare — is a misleading comparison, Quinn said.
"We don't invite coyotes into our homes and we certainly don't pet coyotes," she said. "To have 24 bites in one year in one region, I'd consider that to be very high. ... Yes, we live in close proximity to coyotes, but there is more opportunity for dogs to bite (people)."
Just over a month ago, a Westchester woman was bitten by a coyote when she tried to protect her two small dogs after the animal ambushed them during a walk at dawn, reported the Argonaut Online.
Leonora Smith said the confrontation occurred near Paseo del Rey Natural Science Magnet Elementary School.
"I picked my (smaller) dog up and (the coyote) kept coming around me until finally it sat down in front of me," the Argonaut reported. "I started screaming and telling it to go away, but it kept lunging at me. Finally, one of my neighbors came out and distracted it, and that gave me time to get back into my apartment."
Smith said the bite on her wrist from the July 11 attack was not serious.
Comment: Coyote, bear, lynx and wolf populations are on the rise all over the world.