TRACKING LITERATURE
The Tracking Literature library gathers research on tracks and signs, trailing, and animal behaviour and ecology, together with related fields such as human tracking, forensics, ichnology and taphonomy. Behaviour and natural history papers are here even when they never mention tracking, because understanding behaviour matters to trackers.
Search every field, or narrow the list with the filters. Each paper has its own page with a synopsis, keywords and the full citation. Where a paper is open access, or the authors or publisher have given permission, you can download the PDF; otherwise the page links to the publisher or a legal free copy.
2016PDF available
An updated classification of animal behaviour preserved in substrates
Fossil footprints, burrows, droppings and bite marks are the only way to watch ancient animals move, feed, hunt and raise young. Three ichnologists review more than 60 years of ways to sort these traces by behaviour, borrow classic questions from animal behaviour science, and offer an updated scheme of 13 behaviour types, from resting and dwelling to moulting and digestion. Many of their questions apply just as well to fresh tracks and signs.
2016PDF available
Approaches to Field Investigations of Cause-Specific Mortality in Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus)
A dead deer is a puzzle: was it killed, or did it die and then get eaten? Drawing on years of investigating collared mule deer deaths in Colorado, this field guide shows how to read the scene and the carcass, from bruising under the hide to cougar caches, coyote-chewed ribs, bear “banana peeled” hides and eagle talon wounds.
2016Publisher link
Coastal latrine sites as social information hubs and drivers of river otter fission–fusion dynamics
For coastal river otters in Alaska, the latrine is the place to catch up on the news. Using cameras and proximity tags, researchers found that otters sniff and scent mark more than they socialize, gather in larger groups where trails cross between two bodies of water, and often join or leave a group within hours of a latrine visit.
2016Publisher link
Comparing direct and indirect methods to estimate detection rates and site use of a cryptic semi-aquatic carnivore
Do otter droppings tell the whole story? At latrines along Utah’s Provo River, researchers set cameras beside their monthly scat counts. The cameras caught otters 1.5 times as often, and in 20 site-months otters visited without leaving any scat that was found, yet the more scat a site held, the more otter visits the cameras recorded.
2016PDF available
Estimating Lion Abundance using N-mixture Models for Social Species
How many lions live in the southeastern Serengeti? By broadcasting roars and distress calls at night and reading fresh tracks on swept roads each morning, researchers estimated about 270 lions. Lions quickly grew used to the calls, and bright moonlight made them harder to detect, while track counts could not be turned into a lion count, partly because individual lions were hard to tell apart from their tracks.
2016Publisher link
Evaluating Lost Person Behavior Models
When someone is lost in the wilderness, where should searchers look first? Testing three ways of drawing search maps against hundreds of real cases in the United States, researchers found that simple distance rings around the last known point already cut out over three quarters of the search area, and adding ridges and watersheds did slightly better. Most lost persons did not travel far.
2016PDF available
Guidance for detecting hedgehogs using footprint tracking tunnels
How do you find out if hedgehogs live somewhere without spending nights out with a torch? This guide from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species shows how ten baited, inked tunnels left out for five nights can tell you, with 95% confidence, whether hedgehogs are absent. It covers where to place tunnels, how to make your own, and a life-size guide to telling hedgehog footprints from those of cats, rats, weasels, toads and more.
2016Publisher link
Individual Identification of Raccoons (Procyon lotor) Using Track Plate Foot Printing
Can you tell one raccoon from another by their footprints? Using baited track plates in a Michigan reserve, researchers found that scars, creases and the fine ridge patterns on raccoons’ back feet were distinctive enough to identify individuals, with only a tiny chance of two animals sharing the same pattern. The method is cheap and harmless to the animals, though a longer survey is needed for reliable population counts.
2016Publisher link
Latrine behaviour as a multimodal communicatory signal station in wild lemurs: the case of Hapalemur meridionalis
Southern bamboo lemurs in Madagascar return again and again to the same toilets: the stilt roots of a rare tree, liana tangles and fallen logs. Researchers who followed three groups for a year found that these latrines work like signal posts, combining the smell of dung and scent marks with a landmark that is easy to see. Males even mark over the females’ scent, perhaps to hide them from newcomer males.
2016PDF available
Limitations to recording larger mammalian predators in savannah using camera traps and spoor
Do camera traps see everything that walks past? On dirt roads in a South African game reserve, morning spoor surveys recorded carnivores more than twice as often as cameras, which missed up to 64% of civet visits. Leopards were the twist: they turned up on camera but left no complete prints in front of it. The study also shows why simple spoor measurements help an experienced tracker stay on one leopard’s trail.
2016Publisher link
Monitoring to Learn, Learning to Monitor: A Critical Analysis of Opportunities for Indigenous Community-Based Monitoring of Environmental Change in Australian Rangelands
In South Australia’s remote rangelands, Anangu already help record animal tracks and watch over their country, but most monitoring still serves outside institutions. Drawing on interviews and community workshops, the authors set out how monitoring built on Anangu knowledge, from a managed bushfood zone to a seasonal calendar, could bring jobs, better data and shared learning.
2016PDF available
Preferred gait and walk–run transition speeds in ostriches measured using GPS-IMU sensors
How fast do ostriches choose to move when nobody is setting the pace? Fitting seven ostriches with small GPS and motion sensors, researchers found the birds stroll remarkably slowly, at about 1 m per second, but run across a wide range of speeds, reaching about 11 m per second. Like people, they switch from walking to running at a slightly higher speed than they switch back.
2016PDF available
Scent marking in Sunda clouded leopards (Neofelis diardi): novel observations close a key gap in understanding felid communication behaviours
Clouded leopards were long thought not to scent mark at all. Video cameras in the rainforest of Indonesian Borneo showed otherwise: they scrape, spray, rub their cheeks, claw trees, and keep coming back to the same marking sites, where several males leave and read messages. One leopard even wrapped their tail around a tree trunk, something never before reported in any cat.
2016PDF available
Scent-post preference of free-ranging Namibian cheetahs
Namibian farmers call them “playtrees”: the trees cheetahs visit to leave and read scent marks. Eight years of camera trap records at these trees, covering 337 visits by 38 cheetahs, suggest cheetahs favour trees that are easy to see and give a good view, so their messages are more likely to be found.
2016PDF available
Simplified large African carnivore density estimators from track indices
Can you count lions, leopards and hyaenas from their tracks alone? Reanalysing track surveys from across southern and eastern Africa, the authors show that one simple rule works on sandy soils: track density equals 3.26 times carnivore density. Unlike the older formula, it never gives a negative number of animals, but at very low densities a survey can need thousands of kilometres of searching to find enough tracks.
2016PDF available
Spotting Cheetahs: Identifying Individuals by Their Footprints
Can you tell one cheetah from another by their footprints alone? Using photographs of 781 footprints from 38 captive cheetahs, researchers built a footprint identification technique that told individuals apart with over 90% accuracy. They argue that skilled trackers will be the key to taking it into the wild.
2016PDF available
Strong inference from transect sign surveys: combining spatial autocorrelation and misclassification occupancy models to quantify the detectability of a recovering carnivore
How often does a scat survey miss pine martens that are really there? In northeast Scotland, researchers walked about 100 km of forest paths and found that a standard 1 km transect detected pine martens at only about a third of occupied sites, while DNA showed that a quarter of the scats identified in the field came from foxes. They show how occupancy models can correct for both kinds of error without making surveys more expensive.
2016PDF available
Virtual Plaster Cast: Digital 3D Modelling of Lion Paws and Tracks Using Close-Range Photogrammetry
Can a camera and a ruler replace a bag of plaster? Researchers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa photographed lion paws and tracks from many angles and turned the photos into 3D models that matched calliper measurements to within a fraction of a centimetre. Seven or eight photographs were enough, taking less than a minute per track.
2015PDF available
A morphometric modeling approach to distinguishing among bobcat, coyote and gray fox scats
Can you tell a bobcat’s scat from a coyote’s or a gray fox’s just by measuring it? Using 110 scats confirmed by DNA in coastal California, this study found that size and shape, even with a chemical clue added, got the species right no more than three times in four. A few clues stood out: every scat beside a scrape belonged to a bobcat, and light, unsegmented, plant-rich scats pointed to gray fox.
2015Publisher link
Black bear marking behaviour at rub trees during the breeding season in northern California
What really happens at a bear rub tree? Hidden video cameras in California’s redwood forests caught black bears standing tall to rub their backs and faces on trees, mostly adult males on summer mornings in early June. The bears also twisted their feet deliberately into the trail, leaving ground marks that other bears stopped to sniff, and one young bear showed a never-before-described “groin marking” move.
About the library
What is the Tracking Literature library?
A searchable collection of research papers on tracks and signs, trailing, and animal behaviour and ecology, gathered by Original Wisdom. Each paper has its own page with a plain-language summary, keywords, the full citation and a link to the paper.
Can I download the papers?
Where a paper is open access, or the authors or publisher have given permission, you can download the PDF from its page. Otherwise the page links to the publisher or to a legal free copy.
Who writes the summaries?
Kersey Lawrence of Original Wisdom summarises each paper: what the researchers did, found and concluded, how tracking was used, who did the tracking, and what it means for trackers.
How do I find papers on one species or place?
Type it in the search box, which searches every field including scientific names, or tick it in the Species or Region filter. Filters combine, so you can narrow the list to, for example, leopard papers from Botswana.
How should I cite a paper or a summary?
Each paper page gives the full citation and DOI of the original paper, and a ready-made citation for Original Wisdom's summary of it.