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.
2008Publisher link
Population monitoring of snow leopards using noninvasive collection of scat samples: a pilot study
How reliable is a scat found beside a snow leopard scrape? In 2-day surveys in India, China and Mongolia, DNA showed that up to 54% of scats identified in the field were wrong, with red fox scats the most common mix-up. The same scats revealed individual snow leopards and their sex, showing how DNA from scat could help monitor this elusive cat.
2008PDF available
Sexual Dimorphism in Skulls of the Lowland European Bison, Bison bonasus bonasus
Can you tell a bull bison’s skull from a cow’s? Measuring 600 European bison skulls from Poland’s Białowieża Forest, researchers found that adult bulls have a broad eye-socket region and a short face, and nearly all bulls over five years old have a clearly male skull. Young bulls, and about one cow in five, have skulls that look like the opposite sex.
2008Publisher link
Terrestrial mammal responses to edges in Amazonian forest patches: a study based on track stations
What does it take to study tapirs, peccaries and deer in fragmented Amazon forest? Some sand, a banana and a local hunter who knows the tracks. Using 490 sand track stations around Alta Floresta, Brazil, researchers found that agoutis thrive in small forest patches while hoofed mammals favour large ones, and that tapirs respond to forest edges differently depending on patch size, all for about US$1.20 in materials per transect.
2008Publisher link
The Relevance of Persistence Hunting to Human Evolution
Were our ancestors built to run animals down? Louis Liebenberg, who ran with Kalahari hunters as they tracked kudus to exhaustion, argues that persistence hunting looks rare in the records only because so few researchers could follow it. He suggests that tracking, from following clear footprints to reading signs and predicting where an animal will go, may have shaped both our bodies and our minds.
2008Publisher link
The Response of European Pine Marten Martes martes L. Feeding to the Changes of Small Mammal Abundance
Is the pine marten really a predator that simply eats whatever is most common? By collecting 209 scats along roads in a Spanish natural park and trapping small mammals each season, researchers found that martens ate more small mammals than expected when these were scarcest, and turned to rowanberries in autumn when mice were plentiful. The pine marten, they suggest, sits somewhere between an opportunist and a specialist.
2008PDF available
The Small Mammals of Warsaw as Inferred from Tawny Owl (Strix aluco) Pellet Analyses
What can an owl tell you about a city? Researchers collected 886 tawny owl pellets across Warsaw and identified the bones of 569 small mammals inside. The city centre held half as many species as the outskirts, dominated by striped field mice and rats, and since the 1970s the owls’ catch of house mice and moles has collapsed while bats have risen.
2008PDF available
The diet of pine martens (Martes martes) with reference to squirrel predation in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, Scotland
Do recovering pine martens keep grey squirrels in check? Picking through 120 marten scats from four sites in a Scottish national park, researchers found plenty of voles, mice and autumn berries, but not a single squirrel. Chewed cones and hair tubes suggested why: there were hardly any squirrels left to eat.
2008Publisher link
Tire Tread and Tire Track Evidence: Recovery and Forensic Examination
Almost every major crime involves a vehicle, and vehicles leave tracks. A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) examiner explains how to read, measure, photograph and cast tire tracks, from which way a car turned to the single stone caught in one tire’s tread. Wildlife trackers will recognise many of the principles.
2008Publisher link
Track-based monitoring for the deserts and rangelands of Australia
Could reading tracks in the sand become Australia’s national way of watching over its desert wildlife? This 2008 report lays out a simple 2-hectare, 30-minute track plot, a draft datasheet, and plans for training and accrediting trackers, with Indigenous trackers at the heart of the program. It also shows why handling false positives and missed tracks matters as much as the tracks themselves.
2008PDF available
Using Anecdotal Occurrence Data for Rare or Elusive Species: The Illusion of Reality and a Call for Evidentiary Standards
For decades, people reported wolverines across California’s mountains, yet no verifiable record turned up between 1922 and 2008. Using the fisher, the California wolverine and the ivory-billed woodpecker, three Forest Service researchers show how sightings and unclear tracks or photos can make rare animals seem common, or bring extinct ones back to life on paper. They propose standards of evidence, from sign observations up to DNA and specimens, that get stricter the rarer the species.
2008PDF available
Variation of Insect Assemblages in Fox and Marten Faeces Collected in Southern Poland
What can a beetle leg in a scat tell a tracker? Picking through fox and marten scats from two Polish national parks, researchers identified 30 kinds of insects and other small creatures. Martens left signs of raiding insect nests and hunting small beetles in meadows, while foxes ate bigger forest beetles and carrion insects that point to scavenging.
2007PDF available
An evaluation of structured snow-track surveys to monitor Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx populations
Can a few hundred skiers counting lynx tracks in the snow tell whether a hunted population is shrinking? Using real movements of 31 radio-collared lynx in Norway, researchers simulated snow-track surveys and found that lines placed where lynx travel, checked three nights after snowfall, detected 80% of the lynx present. Field trials with volunteer hunters backed this up, though some tracks of foxes, wolverines, hares and dogs were mistaken for lynx.
2007PDF available
Changes in red fox Vulpes vulpes diet due to colonisation by lynx Lynx lynx
When lynx returned to a Swedish forest, what happened to the red foxes’ dinner? By comparing fox scats from 1999 to 2002 with an identical study from the 1970s, researchers found that roe deer, mostly scavenged from lynx kills, had become the foxes’ most important food all year round, replacing fish, reptiles, invertebrates and plant food. But the lynx bring a risk too: they readily kill foxes.
2007PDF available
Characterisation of Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx den sites and kitten survival
Where does a Eurasian lynx mother hide her kittens? Revisiting 70 dens found over 17 years of radio-tracking in the Swiss Jura and Alps, researchers found that most were snug rock shelters on steep slopes people struggle to reach, often with a lookout terrace in front. Good dens turned out to be plentiful, and most kittens were lost after they left the den, not while in it.
2007Publisher link
Comparing Scat Detection Dogs, Cameras, and Hair Snares for Surveying Carnivores
Which finds forest carnivores best: a trained dog’s nose, a remote camera, or a hair snare? Across Vermont, scat detection dogs found black bears, fishers and bobcats at more than three times as many sites as cameras, while hair snares never caught a fisher or bobcat hair. Dogs cost a little more per site, but for bears and fishers one dog visit did what took five camera surveys.
2007PDF available
Diet of sympatric pine marten (Martes martes) and stone marten (Martes foina) identified by genotyping of DNA from faeces
Pine martens and stone martens leave scats that look exactly alike, so how can you tell what each is eating? Researchers in central Poland used DNA from scats to sort them by species, then picked apart the remains: pine martens hunted more rodents and birds in the forest, while stone martens, some living in attics, ate far more fruit and insects, from orchards and gardens as well as the woods.
2007PDF available
Does size dimorphism reduce competition between sexes? The diet of male and female pine martens at local and wider geographical scales
Male pine martens are about 40% heavier than females, but do they eat bigger prey? Using scats and snow-tracking in Poland’s Białowieża Forest, and diet studies from Russia, this study found that the sexes ate prey of similar size. Females climbed trees more and ate more squirrels and birds, while males ate more carcasses, so behaviour, not size, explained most of the difference.
2007Publisher link
Effectiveness of Scat Detection Dogs for Detecting Forest Carnivores
How good is a dog’s nose at finding a bobcat’s scat in a Vermont forest? Five dog teams found nearly 1,600 carnivore scats in two summers, most of which the teams thought they would never have spotted without the dog, and detected black bears and fishers on almost every visit where they were present. DNA tests also revealed how often people’s identifications of scat by eye were right, and how often they were not.
2007PDF available
Estimating wolverine Gulo gulo population size using quadrat sampling of tracks in snow
How do you count an animal that is rarely seen and roams huge areas? Flying low over fresh snow in Alaska and Yukon, teams followed every wolverine track they found forward and backward through a grid of random squares. The result was the most precise wolverine population estimates reported at the time, from a method that rests on reading tracks well.
2007PDF available
Habitat, Highway Features, and Animal-Vehicle Collision Locations as Indicators of Wildlife Crossing Hotspots
Where do wild animals really cross the road? Tracking along 41 km of New Hampshire highways in one winter and spring turned up over 7000 track records of 22 species, from moose and deer to fisher, bobcat and a Canada lynx. Moose, deer and predators each chose different crossing places, and moose crossings did not match where moose had been hit by cars.
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.