Many species are also getting used to the idea that humans do not necessarily pose a threat. It helps that we no longer automatically shoot predators on sight, or put a bounty on their heads. Prey species like elk and deer have in many cases also learned to prefer cities and suburbs because the relatively open habitat provides a margin of safety from predators. Predators naturally follow. During moose calving season, for instance, grizzly bears frequent the backyards of Anchorage.

Are humans equally capable of adapting? Stan Gehrt, an Ohio State University biologist who studies Chicago’s population of about 4,000 coyotes, says complaints have tapered off as city residents have become accustomed to their new neighbors. The coyotes don’t bite or threaten people, though they can be aggressive toward dogs. (When there is a human on the other end of the leash, this can be alarming, he acknowledged. But dogs in Cook County, which includes Chicago, bite about 3,000 people every year.)

The situation in Mumbai is more complicated. The city’s 21 million people have encircled and encroached on a national park, where about 35 free-roaming leopards live. Mumbai’s leopards can of course kill people and have done so a half-dozen times since 2011. But one man who survived an attack at a village inside the park said his family had no plans to move out to the grim little high-rise flats the city offers as an alternative. It would mean too many bills and too little space: “Where will the chickens go?” Instead, people adapt, he said. “In the night the leopard is the king. He can go anywhere.”

The city at large has so far also held to the belief that the leopards should continue living where they always have. In the past when people spotted a leopard in the neighborhood, a wildlife biologist told me, they called park officials demanding its removal. But researchers there have demonstrated that removing and relocating leopards simply leads to more attacks, as the confused animals try to find their way in new territory, and as other leopards with less experience at negotiating human-dominated habitat take over their old territory. Now people phone demanding a workshop on how to coexist safely with leopards. Last month, the park issued a pamphlet of camera trap photos and names for all 35 leopards. (Your new neighbor is named “Mastikhor.” It means “mischievous.”)

If you are thinking, “Wait, that’s just nuts,” think again about the nature of risk. We have learned to protect and restore rivers in our cities, says Adrian Treves at the University of Wisconsin, even though floods sometimes destroy homes and drown people. We cherish trees on urban streets and in parks even though branches sometimes fall on our heads. For that matter, we let cars dominate city streets, though they kill more than 4,700 pedestrians in the United States every year (and many times more in India).