The latest crazy coyote behavior in the SF Bay Area is that coyotes are swimming the more than one mile between Tiburon and Angel Island, and apparently somewhere between 14 and 17 coyotes now call Angel Island home.

We've known for years that the probable reason that San Francisco has coyotes again is because they probably walked here from Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. Now Angel Island park officials have observed another very unexpected coyote behavior.

SFGate had a report this weekend that Angel Island park staffers saw a coyote swimming from Angel Island toward Tiburon, a distance that is more than a mile. That report goes into more detail that the first coyote was observed on Angel Island in 2017, and that there are now an estimated 14 to 17 coyotes on the island, where there had never been any observed prior to eight years ago.

The Instagram video above has some commenters giving guff that the park personnel didn't do more to help the coyote, but park staff dismiss that. "Coyotes are good swimmers," park interpreter Casey Dexter-Lee told SFGate. "We try very hard not to interfere with natural behaviors of wildlife whenever possible, as long as it's not in conflict with the visitors. We let the animals do their thing."

KQED has better video of the coyote swimming, and spoke to California State Parks environmental scientist Bill Miller, who took the video. Ironically, Miller was boating out to Angel Island specifically to work on a coyote research project. "I'm going out there to look for coyotes on camera, and then here just to see one, swimming, it was pretty fun," he told KQED.

The coyote in the video did not swim the whole way to Tiburon, and instead turned around about one-quarter of the way and headed back to Angel Island. Park staffers aren't sure why.

But they do know that the first recorded coyote got there in 2017, and would howl at the coyotes over in Tiburon. Another eventually swam over, they had a litter of pups, and the population has now grown to an estimated 14 to 17 coyotes.

There are plausible theories on why the coyotes would make that swim to Angel Island, and even stay there permanently once they had. The island had a large population (some would say overpopulation) of raccoons and deer, for which coyotes are predators. Those populations have decreased since the coyotes' arrival.

But that's just one theory. "Maybe coyotes want to go somewhere else," California Department of Fish and Wildlife ecologist Bill Furnas told KGO. "Young coyotes want to set up new territories and they are dispersing."

Related: Video: Li'l Coyote Pup Rescued After Falling Into Bay at Fisherman's Wharf [SFist]