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.
2002PDF available
Support polygons and symmetrical gaits in mammals
Why do monkeys, horses and camels place their feet in different orders when they walk? By filming 45 mammal species, from mouse lemurs to elephants, researchers found that walking gaits follow three simple rules that keep animals as well balanced as possible. One dog even switched between walking “like a horse” and “like a camel”, and primates’ unusual walk may help them test a branch before trusting it.
2001Publisher link
A review of methods to estimate the abundance of terrestrial carnivores using field signs and observation
How do you count animals that hide by day and roam by night? This review weighs up the ways researchers estimate carnivore numbers without catching them, from footprints on dusty roads and droppings to DNA, howling surveys, spotlights and camera traps. Again and again it finds that the skill of the person reading the signs matters, and that any index is best checked against a population of known size.
2001PDF available
Basic Visual Tracking: Elective, Cadet / Instructor Notes
How do you teach teenagers to follow a trail? In 2001, the Australian Air Training Corps gave its cadets a 21-period course in visual tracking, from reading broken cobwebs and turned-over bark to ageing blood and spotting someone walking backwards. These cadet and instructor notes also show how to cast animal tracks in plaster and build “time boxes” to watch tracks age.
2001PDF available
Censusing and monitoring black rhino (Diceros bicornis) using an objective spoor (footprint) identification technique
Can a rhino be recognized from its footprint alone? In Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, researchers photographed and measured 290 hind footprints from 15 known black rhino and matched them back to the right animal with up to 95% accuracy. This 2001 paper lays the groundwork for counting and monitoring endangered animals without darting or collaring them.
2001Publisher link
Identifying the Involvement of Multiple Carnivore Taxa with Archaeological Bone Assemblages
Who chewed these bones 1.8 million years ago? By measuring the size and shape of tooth marks left by modern hyaenas, lions, leopards, cheetahs and jackals, the authors show that the bones at the famous FLK Zinjanthropus site were chewed by more than one kind of carnivore. They argue that cats ate first, early hominids took the scraps and marrow, and hyaenas came last.
2001PDF available
Ju/’hoan Women’s Tracking Knowledge and Its Contribution to Their Husbands’ Hunting Success
For decades, anthropologists wrote that Ju/’hoan San women did not hunt. Following couples through the Namibian Kalahari in 1995, Megan Biesele and Steve Barclay watched husbands and wives track side by side, signalling silently and switching trails at least 20 times in four hours, with the wife every bit as skilled as her husband. Their paper asks whether this partnership is new, or as old as tracking itself.
2001Publisher link
Landscape fragmentation and connectivity for carnivores in the Upper San Pedro Basin
Can tracks show where wildlife corridors are still possible? Walking 386 km of trails, roads and washes in southern Arizona, a researcher recorded tracks and signs of 13 carnivore species, from pumas and black bears to hog-nosed skunks, and found most preferred washes and narrow trails to roads. A simple map model then picked out the washes that still link the Huachuca Mountains to the San Pedro River before housing closes them off.
2001PDF available
Monitoring changes in feral swine abundance and spatial distribution
How do you know whether a feral swine control programme worked? In a Florida state park, researchers raked strips of sandy road and counted the swine tracks crossing them. After 25 swine were removed, track crossings fell by 81% and fresh rooting by 89%, and the same plots showed where the remaining swine were active and hinted at others moving back in.
2001Publisher link
Rock Art, the Art of Tracking, and Cybertracking: Demystifying the “Bushmen” in the Information Age
Is tracking an ancient mystical gift, or a skill anyone can learn? Reviewing Louis Liebenberg’s tracking books and a book on San rock art, a visual anthropologist argues that tracking is a learned skill, and criticizes films and media reports that keep the San in the “past”, even as San game rangers record their observations on the new CyberTracker.
2001PDF available
Scapanus latimanus
The broad-footed mole spends almost its whole life underground in the western United States and Baja California, so most people know it only by its signs. This species account gathers what was known about how it is built for digging, what it eats, and the raised mole-runs and volcano-shaped mounds it leaves behind, which differ from the crescent-shaped mounds of pocket gophers.
2001Publisher link
Scent-Marking by Male Mammals: Cheat-Proof Signals to Competitors and Mates
Why would an animal leave a message on a bush when no one is there to read it? This classic review argues that a pattern of scent marks is a signal that cannot be faked: males can only keep their marks fresh across an area if they can hold it. It also explains where animals place marks, who else reads them (from rivals and mates to kestrels and ticks), and how scent-marking may make territories affordable.
2001Publisher link
Snow Leopard Manual: Field Study Techniques for the Kingdom of Nepal
How do you count a cat that almost nobody ever sees? This 2001 field manual for Nepal teaches rangers and students to find and read snow leopard scrapes, scats, scent sprays and pugmarks along ridgelines and cliff bases, to tell them from leopard and wolf signs, and to count the blue sheep the cats depend on. It also shows how to interview herders about sightings and livestock losses.
2001Publisher link
Testing the surveys and visual and track censuses of Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra)
How well do otter tracks and droppings reveal how many otters are really there? Using radio-tagged otters released into rivers in north-east Spain, researchers found that a single otter leaves signs over dozens of kilometres, and that counting only fresh footprints matched the number of otters seen at dawn and dusk. Counting old and new prints together doubled the estimate.
2001Publisher link
The Contexts of Female Hunting in Central Africa
In one Aka village in the Central African Republic, women net-hunt more often than men. Over 76 hunts, women made up most of the hunters, hunted while pregnant and into old age, and hunts led mostly by women brought home more meat per person. The authors ask why women hunt here and not everywhere.
2001Publisher link
The Economic Consequences of Advertising Scent Mark Location on Territories
Why do so many mammals scrape the ground, thrash bushes or strip bark right where they leave their scent? Roberts and Gosling suggest these visual signs work like a signpost, helping intruders find scent marks so they can recognise a territory owner and avoid a costly fight. Their simple model shows that easier-to-find marks let owners mark less often and still get the message across.
2001Publisher link
Using snow-track surveys to determine deer winter distribution and habitat
Where do deer spend the winter when the forest is too dense to see them from the air? Over three winters in British Columbia, crews walked straight lines through the snow, recording every deer track and measuring the habitat every 50 m. Snow depth explained most of what they found: in deep-snow years the deer gathered on a few shallow, south-facing slopes.
2001Publisher link
Validation of a rigorous track classification technique: identifying individual mountain lions
Can you tell one mountain lion from another just by their footprints? Using silicone molds of 13 real lion feet, researchers made hundreds of tracks in the lab, had five people trace them, and found six measurements that matched 96% of tracings to the right lion. The method also counted the right number of lions in 9 of 10 tests on real field tracks.
2000Publisher link
An evaluation of two methods of assessing feral cat and dingo abundance in central Australia
How do you count animals you almost never see? In central Australia, researchers compared night-time spotlighting with counting fresh tracks on swept sandy roads. The tracks found up to 125 times more feral cats and dingoes per kilometre, gave much more consistent results, and took less than half the time.
2000Publisher link
Improved Approach to Tiger Counting through Pugmarks
For decades India counted its wild tigers from their pugmarks, and in the 1990s the method came under fire. In this short paper from 2000, a researcher at Similipal Tiger Reserve answers the main criticisms, from tracings that differ between people to undercounted cubs, and sets out how the technique was being made clearer, simpler and easier to check.
2000PDF available
Interpreting Visual Signs of the Indian Crocodile
Can you tell a gharial from a mugger by their tracks alone? This short field note from India’s Similipal Tiger Reserve shows how: gharials cannot lift their bodies in a “high walk”, so they always leave a body drag. It also explains how to estimate a crocodile’s length from head prints, hind footprints and the scute lines in a tail drag, and how to tell crocodilian tracks from those of otters and turtles.
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.