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.
2017PDF available
Canada Lynx
Maine holds the largest population of Canada lynx in the lower 48 states, and much of what biologists know about where they live comes from tracks in the snow. Winter track surveys found lynx in 47% of towns surveyed in 2003 to 2008 and in 88% of towns surveyed so far in the current round, while GPS collars are showing lynx settling at the southern edge of their range.
2017Publisher link
Classifying Carnivore Tracks Using Dimensions That Control for Snow Conditions
Marten or fisher? Their tracks in snow can look almost the same. By backtracking radio-collared animals in Wisconsin and measuring both the tracks and the snow they were made in, researchers told the two species apart with up to 96% accuracy, and the sexes too, once they allowed for how deep and soft the snow was.
2017Publisher link
Comparing Morphological and Molecular Diet Analyses and Fecal DNA Sampling Protocols for a Terrestrial Carnivore
Does it matter which end of a coyote scat you sample? In the Utah desert, researchers tested 50 coyote scats for rabbit and hare DNA at five places on each scat and compared the results with the hair and bones inside. DNA found prey in three quarters of the scats when all five samples were combined, but a single sample did no better than the hair and bones, because prey DNA is not spread evenly through a scat.
2017Publisher link
Continuity and change in hunting behaviour among contemporary indigenous peoples
Not all hunters in a community hunt the same way. Interviews with 344 Tsimane’ men in the Bolivian Amazon revealed four kinds of hunters, from a small, highly successful group that takes deer, peccaries and other large animals, to a large group that catches less but takes a wide range of species. The authors argue that a few skilled hunters focused on vulnerable species may matter more for wildlife than many hunters with mixed catches.
2017PDF available
Discrete call types referring to predation risk enhance the efficiency of the meerkat sentinel system
Meerkats on guard duty do more than say “I’m watching”. In the Kalahari, playback experiments showed that sentinels switch from frequent calming calls to rare warning calls when danger rises, and the foraging group listens: calming calls keep them digging, while warning calls make them stop and scan. The extra warning call lets the group stay alert without abandoning a meal.
2017PDF available
Does human infrastructure shape scent marking in a solitary felid?
Do forest roads change how wild cats talk to each other? By following Eurasian lynx tracks through the snow in Slovenia for 94 km, researchers counted 619 urine sprays and found that lynx marked almost twice as often on forest roads and logging trails as off-road. Their overall marking rate was the highest yet recorded for a wild cat, suggesting that quiet roads may work as message boards for lynx.
2017PDF available
Fragments of the Hunt: Persistence Hunting, Tracking and Prehistoric Art
“When I see an animal spoor, I become the animal,” a young Ju/’hoan tracker told the Finnish artist Mikko Ijäs in Namibia. In this doctoral thesis, Ijäs asks whether the experience of becoming the animal while tracking and running down prey, practised by our ancestors for perhaps two million years, could lie behind the part-human, part-animal figures and painted tracks in the world’s oldest rock art.
2017PDF available
Herders’ ecological knowledge and carnivore predation on livestock investigations in Makgadikgadi and Nxai national parks, Botswana
In Botswana, herders often carry out the first check when a lion, leopard or wild dog kills their livestock, and compensation depends on naming the right predator. Researchers found that herders’ reports of predation matched official records well, and they recognised carnivores easily from photos. Identifying the same carnivores from photos of their tracks and kills proved much harder.
2017PDF available
Histological, chemical and behavioural evidence of pedal communication in brown bears
Brown bears may leave messages with every step. Researchers found scent glands between the toes and on the soles of bear paws, scent chemicals found only in adult males, and a camera recorded bears twisting their feet into a trail of worn footprints by a rubbing tree, mostly males in the mating season. The tracks themselves seem to be a way for solitary bears to talk to each other.
2017PDF available
Identification of the Anteroposterior and Mediolateral Position of Lion Paws and Tracks Using 3D Geometric Morphometrics
Was that track left by a front or a hind foot, a right or a left? Mixing them up can turn one lion into two. Using 3D models built from ordinary photos of lion paws and tracks in two South African parks, researchers could tell which foot made a track with up to 91% accuracy, a step towards identifying individual lions from their tracks.
2017PDF available
Identifying Bald Versus Golden Eagle Bones: A Primer for Wildlife Biologists and Law Enforcement Officers
When all that is left of an eagle is a pile of bones, can you tell a bald eagle from a golden eagle? A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensic scientist found simple shape features on eight bones, from a “window” in the skull to a notch at the top of the lower leg bone. Using only his annotated photographs, volunteers with no experience of eagle bones got 93 to 100% of identifications right.
2017PDF available
Monitoring lions (Panthera leo) using digital 3D models of their tracks
Can a handful of photographs replace the plaster cast? In two KwaZulu-Natal parks, a researcher built 3D models of lion paws, tracks and whole trails from ordinary camera shots, in under a minute per track. The models told front from hind and left from right, and separated males from females, though telling individual lions apart from new tracks still needs work.
2017PDF available
Sand transport and burrow construction in sparassid and lycosid spiders
How do you dig a burrow in sand so dry it pours like water? In the dunes of Morocco, one spider carries sand in a basket of bristles on its mouthparts, while its neighbour ties the grains together with silk; in North America, a wolf spider kicks solid sand pellets up to half a metre away. The burrows stay open not because of the silk, but because the sand grains around them lock together like the stones of a vault.
2017PDF available
Smartphone Icon User Interface design for non-literate trackers and its implications for an inclusive citizen science
Some of the world’s best trackers cannot read or write, and for decades that kept them from recording scientific data. Louis Liebenberg, software developer Justin Steventon and five Kalahari and Karoo trackers tell how the CyberTracker icon interface changed that, from tracking individual rhinos in the Karoo to tracks-and-signs data that warned health authorities of Ebola weeks before human outbreaks. The paper is dedicated to co-author !Nate Brahman, who died before it was published.
2017Publisher link
The Skeleton Revealed: An Illustrated Tour of the Vertebrates
What can a skeleton tell you about how an animal lives? Biologist Steve Huskey posed and rebuilt nearly 200 vertebrate skeletons, from pythons swallowing squirrels to an owl eating a cobra, to show how bones shape the way animals hunt, feed, dig, climb and defend themselves. Along the way you learn that leopard tortoises chew old bones for calcium and that anteaters walk on the sides of their feet to spare their palms.
2017PDF available
The challenge of monitoring elusive large carnivores: An accurate and cost-effective tool to identify and sex pumas (Puma concolor) from footprints
Pumas have no spots or stripes, so how do you tell one from another? Using photographs of left hind footprints from 35 captive pumas, researchers correctly told individuals apart in more than 90% of tests and sexed a single footprint correctly 99% of the time. The method offers a cheap, non-invasive way to count these elusive cats, as long as someone can find and read a clear footprint.
2017PDF available
The distribution and numbers of cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) in southern Africa
How many cheetahs are left in southern Africa? By piecing together collar data, camera traps, spoor surveys by local trackers and thousands of verified tourist photos, researchers estimated about 3,577 free-ranging adults, 11% fewer than the official figure. More than half are concentrated in just two habitat regions, much of it unprotected farmland, and on Namibian farms a handful of landowners removed most of the cheetahs killed or captured.
2017PDF available
The scent of your enemy is my friend? The acquisition of large carnivore scent by a smaller carnivore
Why would a small fox rub their face in a mountain lion’s scent mark? Four years of video at puma scrapes in California showed gray foxes seeking out fresh puma scrapes to cheek rub, picking up the big cat’s scent rather than leaving their own. The authors suggest that smelling like a puma may buy a fox the seconds they need to escape a coyote or bobcat up a tree.
2017PDF available
Troubling issues at the frontier of animal tracking for conservation and management
Tracking collars and tags have shown us where wild animals go, but the same data can lead people straight to them. This short commentary gathers real cases, from tagged white sharks culled in Western Australia to attempts to hack tiger collar data in India, and sets out how researchers might keep tracking data and the animals behind it safe.
2017Publisher link
Vertebrate Diversity Benefiting from Carrion Provided by Pumas and Other Subordinate, Apex Felids
A puma’s kill feeds far more than the puma. Filming 242 puma kills in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, researchers recorded 39 species of birds and mammals feeding on the leftovers, from red foxes and magpies to golden eagles, bears and deer mice. They argue that pumas and six puma-like cats around the world keep carrion flowing through ecosystems, and deserve conservation support for it.
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.