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.
1994Publisher link
Carnivore tooth marks and stone tool butchery marks on scavenged bones: archaeological implications
What is left of a carcass when the lions, leopards, hyenas and jackals walk away? In the Serengeti, a researcher watched carnivores feed, then scavenged the leftover limbs with stone tools. Bones left by lone feeders still carried flesh, while those fought over by big mixed groups held little but marrow, and the tooth marks, cut marks and hammerstone marks on the bones record that difference.
1994PDF available
Chromatographic (TLC) Differentiation of Grizzly Bear and Black Bear Scats
Can you tell a grizzly bear scat from a black bear scat once the tracks are gone? In Montana, researchers turned to lab chemistry, reading the pattern of spots that scat extracts leave on a chromatography plate. Their key was right 94% of the time for late-summer scats it could call, though many scats stayed ambiguous.
1994PDF available
Faeces count as an index of fox abundance
How well does counting fox scats along paths tell you how many foxes are around? Walking 982 km of transects in central Italy over a year, this study found that scat counts gave a consistent picture of where foxes were most common, and that fruit in the diet made little difference. The big catch was rain: heavy rain washed scats away, so counts are only comparable between places and times with similar rainfall.
1994PDF available
Range use by an adult male caracal in the southern Kalahari
How much room does one caracal need in the Kalahari? Following a single radio-collared male from the air for about 18 months, researchers found they used about 308 km², many times more than male caracals studied in the Cape. The caracal also found their way home after being released 25 km from where they were caught.
1994PDF available
The Scientific Basis for Conserving Forest Carnivores: American Marten, Fisher, Lynx, and Wolverine in the Western United States
How much did we really know about martens, fishers, lynx and wolverines in the western United States in 1994? This Forest Service review found huge gaps, with much of the best information coming from snow-tracking: lynx hunting from “waiting beds” in the snow and wolverines covering 30 to 40 km a day. The editors call for the loss of old forest to be taken seriously and set out the research needed to keep these elusive carnivores in the western mountains.
1993Publisher link
A Rigorous Technique for Identifying Individual Mountain Lions Felis concolor by Their Tracks
Can you tell one mountain lion from another by their tracks? At a 1988 workshop, none of 52 participants could pick out three tracks from the same lion. Measuring traced tracks and combining the measurements statistically sorted every left rear track of nine California mountain lions to the right animal.
1993PDF available
Disturbance bias when tracking Kalahari leopards Panthera pardus by spoor
Does following a leopard’s tracks every day change how the leopard behaves? In the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, researchers trailed nine male leopards and measured how far each one fled when found. Flights averaged under a kilometre, the leopards often lay down to rest on the way, and there was no sign that they grew used to the trackers or fled further as the days went on.
1993Publisher link
Fecal Pellet Measurements of Manipur Brow-Antlered Deer With Respect to Sex and Age Classes
Can droppings tell you whether a deer is male or female, young or old? Working with captive Manipur brow-antlered deer, one of the rarest deer in the world, researchers measured and weighed pellets from 12 animals and found that a combination of length, width and weight can help separate sex and age classes. They suggest the method could help monitor a wild population of about 50 deer that is very hard to see.
1993Publisher link
Some inferences on the biology of tiger and leopard in Similipal Tiger Reserve
Can footprints tell you who is growing up, who is breeding and who has been pushed out? Using four winters of pugmark census in India’s Similipal Tiger Reserve, two reserve officers sorted tigers and leopards by the length of their hind footprints. Gaps in the size classes pointed to young tigers wandering off before claiming a territory, and to old adults moving away from the census routes.
1993PDF available
Tiger census: Role of quantification
For years, India counted its tigers by tracing their pug marks and comparing them by eye, and the counts were often disputed. In this early study, statisticians and Project Tiger staff turned tracings into measurements, tested how much the person tracing and the ground affect them, and built a rule that told male from female prints in most cases. They also found prints from two reserves differed enough to be told apart about 90% of the time.
1992Publisher link
Distribution and Status of the Fisher (Martes pennanti) in Washington
How do you map a forest carnivore that almost nobody sees? Pulling together a century of sightings, trapping reports and museum specimens, researchers found that fishers were hanging on in Washington’s Cascades, Olympics and Okanogan Highlands, but were very rare. Deep snow, clearcuts and the importance of swamps and streamside forests all help explain where they were still found.
1992PDF available
Evaluation of Road Track Surveys for Cougars (Felis concolor)
Can you count cougars by the tracks they leave on dirt roads? In southern Utah, researchers dragged over 1000 km of road with a tree behind a truck and searched for fresh cougar tracks in an area where the radio-collared cats were known. They found just nine track sets, and no link with cougar density, though more tracks turned up where more home ranges crossed the road.
1992Publisher link
Forest elephants in a rainforest fragment: preliminary findings from a wildlife conservation project in southern Ghana
In 1990, researchers in southern Ghana’s Kakum and Assin-Attandanso forests never once saw an elephant. Working only from footprints, dung and feeding signs, they estimated 100 to 150 forest elephants, found they lived in small groups, and trailed crop raiders back into the forest. Elephants rarely went more than 200 m beyond the forest edge, and mothers with young calves seemed to stay inside the reserves.
1992PDF available
Power of Sign Surveys to Monitor Population Trends
How many kilometres of trail would you need to walk to notice that grizzly bears are disappearing? Using five years of bear scats and tracks from Glacier National Park, Montana, this study simulated thousands of surveys and found that even a 20% decline is hard to detect without very large samples. The authors offer practical advice: survey many short trails rather than a few long ones, pool years, and survey when sign is most plentiful.
1991Publisher link
A Key-Guide to Mammal Skulls and Lower Jaws: A Nontechnical Introduction for Beginners
Found a skull on a hike and wondered what it was? This small booklet walks beginners, step by step, from a skull or lower jaw to the name of most wild and domestic mammals of the United States and southern Canada, using simple measurements and tooth counts. It also explains how to handle broken skulls, check an answer, and clean a find for keeping.
1991Publisher link
A Terrestrial Furbearer Estimator Based on Probability Sampling
How do you count wolverines and lynx that are rare, secretive and mostly active at night? After a fresh snowfall in Alaska, aerial teams followed every track crossing their survey lines to the animal and back to where they had waited out the storm, and used how far each had travelled to estimate about 10 wolverines in 1,870 km². The author warns that the method only works if the observers are highly skilled at seeing and identifying tracks.
1991Publisher link
Birth and Fawn Bed Site Selection by Pronghorns in a Sagebrush-Steppe Community
Where does a newborn pronghorn hide in open sagebrush country? In Wyoming’s Great Divide Basin, mothers gave birth, and fawns bedded down, in spots with more sagebrush cover than the land around them, but never in the tallest, densest thickets where predators lurk. Radio-tagged fawns picked their own beds and never used the same one twice.
1991Publisher link
Height Estimation from Foot and Shoeprint Length
Can a single shoeprint tell you how tall someone is? Using measurements of more than 8000 U.S. Army soldiers and the shoes of 84 police officers at tracking courses, a forensic anthropologist and a tracking instructor built simple tables that turn a print’s length into a likely height range. They also show why the popular “foot is 15% of height” rule overestimates men.
1991Publisher link
Kinematics and Performance Capacity for the Concertina Locomotion of a Snake (Coluber constrictor)
How does a snake move through a narrow tunnel? By anchoring curves of its body against the walls and pushing forward, again and again. Putting black racers on a tunnel treadmill, researchers found that the snakes speed up mostly by moving more often, that narrow tunnels force more anchor points and shorter steps, and that in the tightest tunnel they lasted less than a third as long as in their best tunnel.
1991PDF available
Scent Marking (Pasting) in a Colony of Immature Spotted Hyenas (Crocuta crocuta): A Developmental Study
When one spotted hyena pastes scent onto a grass stalk, others soon sniff it and add their own. Watching 20 young captive hyenas grow towards puberty, researchers found that pasting rose sharply with age, was equally common in females and males, and came in bursts more than 20 times the usual rate within a minute of another hyena’s pasting.
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.