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.
2003Publisher link
Habitat use and diet of the red fox Vulpes vulpes in an agricultural landscape in Poland
What happens to red foxes when there is not a single wood left to hide in? In Polish farmland, researchers counted fox tracks in fresh snow and read the tracks and signs at 76 dens, finding one of the highest fox densities in the country. The foxes dug into ditch banks facing the sun and lived on voles, poultry and garbage from a city dump.
2003Publisher link
Identification of Carnivore Feces by Local Peoples and Molecular Analyses
Can people who know a forest tell a jaguar’s scat from a puma’s? In Paraguay’s Mbaracayú Reserve, scientists checked scats identified by indigenous Aché people and reserve rangers against DNA. Every scat the DNA could identify matched the field identification, although the Aché named three small spotted cats with a single word.
2003PDF available
Identification of Eagle Feathers and Feet
Is that headdress feather from an eagle, or a dyed turkey feather? A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics guide sets out the simple clues that tell bald and golden eagle feathers apart, and rule out geese, swans, turkeys, vultures and hawks. A waxy strip, lines inside the shaft, or a bright white shaft can settle the question, and a glance at the lower leg tells the two eagles’ feet apart.
2003PDF available
Importance of scrub–pastureland mosaics for wild-living cats occurrence in a Mediterranean area: implications for the conservation of the wildcat (Felis silvestris)
Is the European wildcat really a forest cat? By reading scats left as scent marks along 78 km of trails in central Spain, researchers found wild-living cats were more often linked to mosaics of scrubland and pasture than to forest. They argue that Mediterranean scrublands deserve a place in wildcat conservation.
2003Publisher link
Monitoring bait removal in vertebrate pest control: a comparison using track identification and remote photography
Who really takes the fox baits? In New South Wales forests, researchers checked sand plots and cheap cameras side by side at 117 bait stations, and found spotted-tailed quolls took almost half the baits while foxes and dogs took only 15%. The photographs also showed where track reading went wrong: rain, very dry sand, unfamiliar bird tracks, and a quoll’s small prints hiding beside a dog’s.
2003Publisher link
Principles of Animal Locomotion
Why does a horse switch from a trot to a gallop, and why does a dog do it at half the speed? R. McNeill Alexander’s classic book explains the mechanics and energy costs of how animals walk, run, jump, crawl, fly and swim. Along the way it covers the physics behind stride length, gait changes and footprint patterns that trackers read every day.
2003PDF available
Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India
For 30 years, India counted its tigers by sending thousands of forest staff out to cast the paw prints of every tiger in the country. Nine tiger experts show why this pugmark census could not deliver reliable numbers, from poor ground and distorted prints to overlapping tiger ranges. They propose a better way to use tracks and signs: map where tigers are, follow trends with standard sign surveys, and keep exact counts for camera traps at a few key sites.
2003PDF available
Terrestrial Mammal Feces: a Morphometric Summary and Description
Can you tell who left a scat from its shape and size alone? This review gathers scat measurements for about 200 mammals from Africa, North America, Europe and northeastern Brazil, and sorts them into nine shape groups that broadly follow the mammal family tree. It shows where measurements work, such as wolf versus coyote, and where they fail, such as jaguar versus puma.
2003Publisher link
The role of scent marking in the social communication of wild golden lion tamarins, Leontopithecus rosalia
Why do golden lion tamarins rub their scent onto branches? A year with 34 wild tamarins in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest showed they mark fruit trees, perhaps to find food again, and that alpha males mark far more than other males. Alpha females stepped up their marking when neighbouring groups came close, but the marks did not seem to defend territory borders.
2003Publisher link
The use of tooth pits to identify carnivore taxa in tooth-marked archaeofaunas and their relevance to reconstruct hominid carcass processing behaviours
Can a tooth mark on a bone tell you which carnivore did the chewing? By measuring tooth pits on bones chewed by lions, hyenas, jackals, bears, dogs and baboons, these researchers found that pit size can sort carnivores into small, medium and large groups, especially on the soft ends of bones, but not reliably into species. Many marks, read together with where and how a bone was gnawed, tell far more than any single mark.
2003Publisher link
Track Plates Baited with Scent Attractants as a Method to Survey for Black-Footed Ferrets: A Pilot Study
Can a scented tunnel and a chalked plate find one of North America’s rarest mammals? In Arizona’s Aubrey Valley, biologists baited 12 track stations with ferret urine and prairie dog parts for 155 nights. Mice, cottontails and prairie dogs left their prints, but wild black-footed ferrets, seen nearby, never walked through.
2003PDF available
Tree rubbing by Yellowstone grizzly bears Ursus arctos
Why do grizzly bears rub against trees? Over seven years in Yellowstone, researchers found 116 rubbed trees, most beside trails or forest edges and often reached by short paths of deep pad prints that bears had worn into the ground. Bears rubbed their backs on big, smooth trees mostly in the mating season, which fits the idea that rub trees work as scent message boards.
2002Publisher link
A Comparison of Population Survey Techniques for Swift Foxes (Vulpes velox) in New Mexico
How do you count a small, shy fox on the open prairie? In New Mexico’s Kiowa National Grasslands, researchers compared six ways of surveying swift foxes and found that picking up scats and confirming them with DNA detected foxes in every home range, while the hard, dry soil held just one clear fox track in the whole study. Counting individuals from scat DNA, though, gave far more foxes than were really there.
2002Publisher link
A Field Computer for Animal Trackers
How do you design a computer for expert trackers who cannot read or write? This short 2002 paper tells how trackers in South Africa’s Karoo National Park helped design the icon-based field computer that became CyberTracker, recording their observations with a touch of a pen and a satellite position. The author argues that the system gives trackers recognition and helps turn the art of tracking into a new science for conservation.
2002Publisher link
Feeding habits and overlap among red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and stone marten (Martes foina) in two Mediterranean mountain habitats
Do red foxes and stone martens compete for the same food? By sorting through 856 scats collected along mountain routes in Spain’s Sierra Nevada, researchers found their diets almost identical in a moist oak valley, but quite different in a dry pine and juniper valley, where martens climbed for berries that foxes largely ignored.
2002Publisher link
Memory for Animal Tracks: A Possible Cognitive Artifact of Human Evolution
Are we born ready to learn tracks? In three experiments, students with little interest in tracking remembered the names of animal tracks better than unfamiliar trees, seashells and tanks. The authors suggest this may be a memory “holdover” from humanity’s long hunter-gatherer past, shared by women and men alike.
2002Publisher link
Monitoring Amur tiger populations: characteristics of track surveys in snow
How do you count some of the rarest big cats on Earth across a vast snowy forest? Using five winters of foot surveys in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin reserve, researchers found tiger tracks stayed readable for about a week in mid-winter but only two days in March. They worked out how long survey routes should be, how many are needed, and why counting tracks beats simply noting whether tigers were there.
2002PDF available
On the origin of faeces: morphological versus molecular methods for surveying rare carnivores from their scats
Can experienced naturalists tell a pine marten scat from a fox scat? DNA tests in Scotland, England and Wales showed they often cannot: nearly one in five Scottish “marten” scats came from foxes, and in England and Wales all but one did. The study is a striking reminder that identifications of rare animals from their signs need an independent check.
2002PDF available
Plot placement when using a passive tracking index to simultaneously monitor multiple species of animals
Should you put your tracking plots on the road or in the bush? On a south Texas ranch, raked plots on quiet dirt roads picked up far more coyote, raccoon, feral swine and rabbit tracks than plots in the thorny brush nearby. When coyotes were removed, track counts of hunted species such as deer fell too, likely because the animals learned to avoid roads busy with vehicles and shooting.
2002PDF available
Rodent density indices from tracking tunnels, snap-traps and Fenn traps: do they tell the same story?
Do footprints in an inked tunnel tell you how many rats are in a forest? Comparing tracking tunnels with snap-traps and stoat-trap by-catch in New Zealand, researchers found the methods agreed where rats were common but told different stories where they were scarce, perhaps because a few active rats can leave prints in many tunnels. Their advice: compare like habitats only, and always back up track counts with a second method.
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.