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.
1983Publisher link
Winter Bed-Site Selection by White-Tailed Deer in Central Ontario
Where does a deer sleep on a bitter winter night, and where do they rest on a sunny afternoon? By backtracking fresh trails in the snow of central Ontario to 423 beds, researchers found that night beds sit deep under hemlock and other conifers, while day beds lie out in the open, sunny hardwoods on south- and west-facing slopes. Overhead cover and conifers alone told the two apart 94% of the time.
1982Publisher link
A Reassessment of the Function of Scent Marking in Territories
Why do so many mammals scent mark their territories when the marks clearly do not keep intruders out? In this classic 1982 paper, L. M. Gosling suggests that marks let an intruder smell an animal and check whether they match the marks all around, so they know who the owner is and can back off before a costly fight. It explains why territory owners rub their own scents onto themselves and scrape away other animals’ dung.
1982Publisher link
Analysis of Posture and Gait Selection During Locomotion in the Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)
Why do skunks so rarely trot? By filming skunks with high-speed and X-ray cameras, researchers found that they mostly use a steady, evenly timed walk and, when hurried, move straight into a slow gallop, both among the most stable gaits a four-legged animal can use. Their wide-legged stance points to the skunk as a living model of how early carnivores moved.
1982Publisher link
Baboon Sleeping Site Preferences and Relationships to Primate Grouping Patterns
Where does a baboon troop choose to spend the night? Drawing on troops across Africa, including his own in Botswana’s Okavango and Savuti, William Hamilton found a clear order: cliffs and caves first, then tall, strongly branched trees, with open woodland a last resort. Safety from night-hunting leopards seems to drive the choice, and the author suggests that where safe sleeping sites are scarce, primates may live in larger groups.
1982Publisher link
Forehead Glands in White-Tailed Deer
Why do deer stop to sniff and lick the saplings that bucks have rubbed? Looking at forehead skin under the microscope, researchers found that white-tailed deer carry hidden scent glands on the forehead that become highly active in bucks during the rut. Antler rubs, it turns out, are scent posts as well as visible signs.
1982Publisher link
Mammalian Prey Digestibility by Bobcats
How much of a meal can you still read in a bobcat scat? In feeding trials with captive bobcats, the cats dissolved 99% of the bones and up to 93% of the hair of the squirrels and cottontails they ate, far more than coyotes do. The authors warn that diet studies built on bobcat scats need to be read with caution.
1982Publisher link
The Functions of Antlers
Why do deer grow antlers? Over the years they have been called heat radiators, predator defences, status badges and ornaments to impress females. Reviewing the evidence, T. H. Clutton-Brock found strong support for only one of these: antlers are weapons, and fighting between stags is common and often costly.
1981Publisher link
A transect survey of small land carnivore and red fox populations on a subarctic fell in Finnish Forest Lapland over 13 winters
For 13 winters, a researcher in Finnish Lapland skied the same 6 km line every week, counting fresh tracks of red foxes, pine martens, stoats and pygmy weasels in the snow. The tracks revealed which habitats each species preferred and how their numbers rose and fell with the vole and lemming cycles. Following fox trails for 281 km showed how much these hunters depend on carcasses.
1981Publisher link
Environmental Characteristics and Functional Significance of Pronghorn Fawn Bedding Sites in Alberta
Where does a newborn pronghorn hide on open prairie with hardly a bush in sight? In southeastern Alberta, researchers caught 465 bedded fawns and found that many lay in small hollows, on bare patches, or tucked against a rock or cow pat, with their colouring as their main camouflage. Fawns bedded in depressions or in native grassland with good cover were seen alive again far more often than those on cultivated land.
1980Publisher link
Patterns of Scent Marking with Urine and Faeces Amongst Carnivore Communities
Why does a fox leave over 100 tiny urine marks on a one-hour walk, while a jackal piles its droppings like a string of beads around its territory? In this classic 1980 review, David Macdonald brings together tame foxes, wolf trails in the snow, hyena latrines and bear marking trees to show that scent marks carry many messages, not just “keep out”, and that the same species can mark very differently from one habitat to the next.
1980Publisher link
The Adaptive Significance of Tetrapod Gait Selection
Why does a dachshund trot while a greyhound paces, and why does a squirrel bound while a horse gallops? Milton Hildebrand, a pioneer of gait analysis, explains how stability, economy of effort, body build and the risk of kicking oneself shape the gaits of four-legged animals. A classic background read for anyone who interprets track patterns.
1980Publisher link
The status, structure and behaviour of populations of the wolf (Canis l. lupus L.) along the Fenno-Soviet border
For over a decade, Finnish border guards read the snow along 2574 km of frontier and recorded every wolf that crossed. Their 4000-plus track records, with data from dead wolves and Soviet track counts, show a wave of wolves moving west from Soviet Karelia in the 1970s, most of them males. The author suggests that hunting may actually speed up wolf population growth.
1979Publisher link
A Note on Tiger Census Technique Based on Pugmark Tracings
Can you count tigers by their footprints? In this 1979 field guide, H.S. Panwar explains how to trace tiger pugmarks on a glass plate, tell males from females by the shape of the hind print, separate tiger cubs from leopards, and organise trackers and tracers for a census. A short, practical snapshot of the method behind decades of tiger counts.
1979Publisher link
Scent Rubbing in Carnivores
Why do dogs, hyenas and lions roll on carrion, dung and each other’s scent marks? Drawing on reports of about 45 carnivore species, a 1979 review traces scent rubbing from rolling on food to the cheek rubbing of cats, and argues that the scent animals pick up is a message for others, not a mark they leave behind.
1979Publisher link
Some Observations and Field Experiments on the Urine Marking Behaviour of the Red Fox, Vulpes vulpes L.
What is a fox saying when they leave a few drops of urine on a grass tussock? By walking hand-reared foxes on a leash and moving marked tussocks back and forth, one researcher found that vixens mark everywhere inside their range but never beyond it. A strange vixen’s urine was enough to turn a fox back. The paper also points trackers to a telling field sign: the yellow, withered leaves of plants a fox marks again and again.
1979PDF available
Wolf Howling and Its Role in Territory Maintenance
What does a wolf pack do when a stranger howls in its territory? Over two years in Minnesota, researchers howled to radio-collared wolves almost 1,900 times. Packs answered most at kills and pup sites, alpha males were the boldest, lone wolves stayed silent, and one alpha male left his tracks, scat and urine mark right beside the howling site.
1978Publisher link
The Ethno-Biology of the !Xo Bushmen: Knowledge Concerning Medium and Smaller Mammals
How much do !Xo Bushmen in Botswana’s Kalahari know about the animals they never eat? A great deal, from leopard courtship read in the sand to hyenas that watch vultures before setting off. This 1970s study records their knowledge of 50 mammals, where it matches science and where it does not.
1978Publisher link
Tracking: A Blueprint for Learning How
“The problem in finding a lost person is never the absence of sign, but the maddening excess of it.” Border Patrol tracker Jack Kearney, who spent nearly twenty years following people through the mountains east of San Diego, sets out the step-by-step training his station taught to search and rescue teams across the United States, from the humble tracking stick to reading the age of a trail.
1977Publisher link
Analysis of Asymmetrical Gaits
How does a cheetah’s gallop differ from a horse’s, or a mouse’s bound from a deer’s pronk? Using slow-motion film of 79 mammal genera, Milton Hildebrand showed that just five timing measurements describe every gallop and bound, and built the terminology and gait graph that researchers still use. He also argued that these gaits first evolved to help small animals escape.
1977PDF available
Locomotory behaviour during basking and spoor formation in the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus)
How does a gharial leave their mark on a riverbank? Watching wild and young captive gharial in India’s Mahanadi river, two researchers broke basking into six phases, from surfacing near the bank to sliding back into the water, and showed how a slow belly walk and a swinging tail leave a compact, inverted U-shaped spoor. They explain why the clearest tail scute marks form as the gharial moves off, and how the sliding mark helps surveyors find basking sites.
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.