A Field Guide to the Animal Tracks of Southern Africa

1. What they did

Louis Liebenberg wrote this book as an introduction to the basics of tracking and as an identification guide to the footprints of southern African animals. Part One covers the basics of tracking: spoor identification, classification of signs, spoor interpretation, principles of tracking, learning to track and dangerous animals. Part Two, the field guide itself, gives drawings of the footprints and trails of invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

The drawings are exact studies of spoor made under ideal conditions, such as wet sand or dusty ground. The author used a calliper to measure every detail and its position, and added photographs and museum specimens to the field studies. Where he could not find the spoor of some rare antelope, he reconstructed it from the hooves of specimens, and marked these drawings so readers can tell them apart.

2. What they found

• The plates show the spoor of about 200 kinds of animals, from earthworms, beetles and scorpions to elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes.
• Each drawing has a centimetre scale and says whether it is actual size or reduced. Mammal and bird prints are labelled right fore and right hind, and many plates show the direction of travel.
• Where spoor varies, several examples are given: for example four drawings of Burchell’s zebra, five of kudu and three of lion and warthog. Some show how the same animal’s spoor changes with the ground (quail on hard dusty ground and in loose sand) or with the gait (hare bounding and jumping, hunting spider walking and running).
• Snake trails are drawn by type of movement: rectilinear (straight line) movement in puff adder and python, undulating movement, and sidewinding in the single-horned adder. A close-up shows how the belly scales of a puff adder and a python mark the ground differently.
• Domestic animals are drawn alongside wild ones, so readers can tell, for example, a domestic dog from a jackal or a domestic cat from an African wild cat.
• The author notes that the spoor of most larger mammals and birds can be identified to species, but small animals often only to genus, family or order. Some antelope overlap: steenbok spoor is usually sharply pointed and duiker spoor more rounded, but some individuals of each look like the other.

3. What they concluded

• The drawings are generalised models meant to simplify identification; in reality no two animals have exactly identical footprints.
• A preconceived image helps trackers recognise spoor they might otherwise overlook, but can also lead them to “recognise” patterns in markings made by other animals or by chance, so trackers should be careful not to see what they want to see.
• Each individual’s spoor differs in subtle ways with age, mass, sex, condition, terrain and the way the animal walks, so in principle individuals can be identified from their spoor, as Kalahari trackers do.
• The reconstructions from specimens are subject to further research, since some specimen hooves may have changed shape.

4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking is the subject of the book. The author studied and drew footprints in the field, in zoos and from specimens, and focused on footprints because they are the easiest signs to identify and give the most detailed information on an animal’s identity, movements and activities. He lists the wider range of signs (feeding signs, urine, faeces, paths, territorial signs and more) but deals with only footprints in detail. Two groups of ǃXõ trackers of the Kalahari correctly told apart male and female kudu spoor drawn from specimens, which the author takes as evidence that specimen hooves keep their shape.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Calliper measurements of every detail against two right-angled reference lines.
• Tracings of the hooves of museum specimens, and reconstructions of rare antelope spoor from specimens.
• Standard labels on every plate: scale bar, actual size or reduced, right fore and right hind, and direction of travel.