North America
Many North American species have successfully adapted to urban environments and are thriving. Typical examples include coyotes, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, opossums, deer and red foxes. This has led to conflict with humans, as these animals open garbage bags in search of food, eat food left out for pets, take the pets themselves, feed on prized garden plants, dig up lawns, and so on. Coyotes pose a risk to small children, who should not be left unsupervised in areas coyotes are known to inhabit; they are large enough to easily kill/eat a child and lack the fear of humans most wild canids exhibit. While there are media accounts of alligators being found in sewer pipes and storm drains, most experts think that such 'sewer alligators' are unlikely to sustain a breeding population in such an environment. The National Zoo of Washington, DC has breeding populations of tropical geckos throughout its steam tunnels; which venture into Rock Creek Park and develop limited breeding populations during the spring/summer, however these populations die out during the fall/winter.
Animals known to dwell within human habitations include house mice, cockroaches, house centipedes (scutigera coleoptrata), silverfish, and firebrats.
Read more about this topic: Urban Wildlife
Famous quotes containing the words north and/or america:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)