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.
1991Publisher link
The Carnivore Community in a Dry Tropical Forest Mosaic in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand
In a patch of dry forest in central Thailand, researchers pieced together a community of 21 carnivores, from leopards and tigers to civets and otters, largely from spoor, scrapes and droppings along roads and trails. Leopard droppings showed a strong taste for barking deer, while smaller carnivores lived on rats, lizards, insects and fruit.
1991Publisher link
The influence of snow on lynx and coyote movements: does morphology affect behavior?
Lynx have big, snowshoe-like feet; coyotes carry up to nearly nine times more weight on each square centimetre of foot. By following almost 400 km of trails in the Yukon snow, researchers found that coyotes make up for much of this by choosing shallow, hard snow and walking in other animals’ trails, and that they may ambush snowshoe hares rather than chase them.
1991Publisher link
Using Sign Counts to Quantify Animal Abundance
How do you turn a count of droppings or tracks into a real number of animals? This 1991 paper sets out a statistical method: mark some animals so their sign can be recognised, then count marked and unmarked sign on sample plots. A worked jack rabbit example shows how much marking and searching a precise estimate needs, and why every sign must be read correctly.
1991Publisher link
Winter Spatial Relationships of Wolves and Coyotes in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba
Do coyotes keep out of the way of wolves? Over four winters of snow tracking in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, coyotes often walked in fresh wolf tracks, following them far more often than backtracking them, sometimes right to a wolf kill. Wolves mostly ignored coyote trails, though they did occasionally kill coyotes, apparently by surprise.
1990PDF available
A Field Guide to the Animal Tracks of Southern Africa
From the trail of an earthworm to the spoor of an elephant, Louis Liebenberg’s 1990 field guide draws the footprints of about 200 southern African animals, each measured with a calliper and shown to scale. It is still a free download, and its opening chapters explain how individual spoor varies and how a tracker’s mental picture can both help and fool them.
1990PDF available
Hoof and foot loads for reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)
How do reindeer stay on top of deep snow? Measuring living reindeer in Finland and the footprints of wild forest reindeer in the snow, this study found that counting the dew claws more than halves the load on each square centimetre. It also shows that a galloping reindeer on one foot presses about four times harder than one standing still.
1990PDF available
Methods of Investigating Predation of Livestock
When a rancher finds a dead calf, was it killed by a predator, scavenged after it died, or attacked because it was already dying? This Alberta field guide shows investigators how to read the kill site and the carcass, from hidden bruising and hoof membranes to tooth spacing and how far a cat reaches to cover a kill. It also describes how bears, wolves, coyotes, dogs, cats, small carnivores and birds each attack and feed.
1990PDF available
Scent marking by red foxes in Central Poland during the winter season
Where does a red fox leave its mark? By following fox trails through the snow of Central Poland over several winters, this study recorded nearly 2000 urine marks and 200 scats. Foxes marked short-lived things like snow, twigs and weeds as often as tree trunks, marked fox trails through rodent-rich areas more, and stepped up urine marking in the forest late in winter.
1990Publisher link
The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science
Could tracking be where science began? In this landmark book, Louis Liebenberg draws on hunts with !Xo trackers in the Kalahari to argue that reading tracks and signs uses the same creative reasoning as modern physics: imagining what an animal did, predicting where its trail will lead, and revising the idea when the ground says otherwise.
1990Publisher link
“I’m Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is”: Iñupiat and Anthropological Models of Gender
“I’m not the great hunter, my wife is,” said one Iñupiaq hunter in Alaska. In this classic paper, anthropologist Barbara Bodenhorn shows why: for Iñupiat, animals give themselves to the hunter because of his wife’s generosity and her skilful sewing, so hunting includes far more than the kill. She uses this to challenge long-held ideas about men, women and hunting societies.
1989PDF available
Differentiating Mountain Lion and Dog Tracks
Was it a mountain lion or a big dog? Even wildlife biologists get it wrong. Two California researchers tested ten published ways to tell the tracks apart, found exceptions to every one, and discovered that the angle between the two outer toes sorted lion tracks from dog tracks best. Their simple field key combines it with other clues to bring identification close to certain.
1989Publisher link
Response of Female White-Tailed Deer to Scrapes and Antler Rubs
Antler rubs and scrapes are usually read as messages between bucks. By watching three tame does day and night in a Georgia forest, researchers found that females sniff, lick and nibble fresh rubs, and walk through, sniff and urinate at scrapes. The authors suggest these signposts may help bring does into breeding condition.
1989Publisher link
Tracce di animali: impronte, escrementi, tracce di pasti, borre, tane e nidi
Why does a deer print look bigger in melting snow, and how can a hazelnut tell you whether a young or an old squirrel opened it? Angelika Lang’s compact Italian field guide covers the footprints, droppings, feeding signs, pellets, burrows and nests of Europe’s mammals and birds, with clear rules for measuring prints and reading gaits.
1989Publisher link
Use of track transects to measure the relative occurrence of some boreal mammals in uncut forest and regeneration stands
How do forest carnivores and their prey respond as a clear-cut grows back? Over five winters in Ontario’s boreal forest, researchers counted snow tracks of marten, lynx, red fox, ermine, snowshoe hare and red squirrel in stands from freshly cut to 200 years old. Marten stuck to uncut forest, hares and lynx favoured 20-year-old regrowth, and track counts rose and fell with the numbers caught in live traps.
1988PDF available
Identification of Mammal Tracks from Sooted Track Stations in the Pacific Northwest
What does a bear track look like on a sheet of soot? In the forests of northwestern California, researchers baited sooted aluminum plates and lifted the prints of 23 mammal species with sticky tape. They found the prints were so much smaller and more detailed than tracks in soil or snow that field guides were useless, so they wrote their own measuring method and identification key.
1988Publisher link
Influence of snow depth on prey availability and habitat use by red fox
How does a red fox get through a hard winter? By following 125 km of fox trails through the snow in Maine, researchers found that foxes picked the firmest footing, and that deep snow pushed them from hunting mice and voles under the snow to hunting snowshoe hares in dense thickets.
1988Publisher link
Prey Hair and Bone Recovery in Ermine Scats
How much of a meal can you still see in a scat? Feeding caged ermine a mash of meadow voles, researchers found that virtually all the vole hair came out the other end, while about 60% of the bone was digested. Up to nearly half the hair in the scats was the ermine’s own, swallowed while grooming.
1988Publisher link
Selection of Trees for Rubs by White-Tailed Deer in Maine
Which trees does a white-tailed buck choose to rub? Along field edges in Maine, researchers measured over 100 rubs and found deer picked thin, smooth-barked saplings with no low branches, and that the rubs came in clusters. Surprisingly, deer here avoided the aromatic cherries that deer in Georgia favour, perhaps because cherries were so common in Maine.
1988PDF available
Speed, Stride Frequency and Energy Cost Per Stride: How Do They Change With Body Size and Gait?
Why does a mouse burn energy six times faster than a horse when they run? Timing the strides of 16 species on a treadmill, from mice to horses, two Harvard researchers found that each kilogram of animal uses about the same energy per stride at comparable speeds. Small animals simply take many more strides, and each gait’s speed range and stride rhythm change in a predictable way with body size.
1988Publisher link
Status of the Snow Leopard Panthera uncia in Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, China
How do you count a cat you almost never see? In the 1980s, George Schaller and Chinese colleagues walked the high mountains of Qinghai and Gansu counting snow leopard scrapes and droppings, and found the cats still widespread but hunted hard, with possibly 650 left in Qinghai. Their droppings showed that marmots matter as much as blue sheep in their diet.
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.