# 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.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/1990-liebenberg-field-guide-animal-tracks/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Louis Liebenberg
- **Year published:** 1990
- **Journal or source:** Book, David Philip Publishers, Cape Town
- **Full citation:** Liebenberg, L. 1990. A field guide to the animal tracks of southern Africa. David Philip Publishers, Cape Town.
- **Access status:** Hosted (freely available elsewhere)
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/1990_Liebenberg_a-field-guide-to-the-animal-tracks.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > Aardvark; Mammals > Aardwolf; Mammals > African buffalo; Mammals > African elephant; Mammals > African wild cat; Mammals > African wild dog; Mammals > Bat-eared fox; Mammals > Black rhinoceros; Mammals > Black-backed jackal; Mammals > Blue wildebeest; Mammals > Brown hyena; Mammals > Cape fox; Mammals > Caracal; Mammals > Cheetah; Mammals > Common duiker; Mammals > Eland; Mammals > Gemsbok; Mammals > Giraffe; Mammals > Greater kudu; Mammals > Ground pangolin; Mammals > Ground squirrel; Mammals > Hippopotamus; Mammals > Honey badger; Birds > Kori bustard; Mammals > Leopard; Mammals > Lion; Reptiles > Nile crocodile; Birds > Ostrich; Mammals > Plains zebra; Mammals > Porcupine; Reptiles > Puff adder; Mammals > Red hartebeest; Mammals > Roan antelope; Birds > Secretary bird; Mammals > Serval; Mammals > Slender mongoose; Mammals > Small-spotted genet; Mammals > Spotted hyena; Mammals > Springbok; Mammals > Springhare; Mammals > Steenbok; Mammals > Striped polecat; Mammals > Suricate; Birds > Verreaux’s eagle; Mammals > Warthog; Mammals > White rhinoceros; Mammals > Yellow mongoose
- **Region:** Africa > Botswana; Africa > Namibia; Africa > South Africa
- **Tracking:** Gaits; Track measurements; Tracking; Tracks; Tracks and signs identification
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Movement
- **Data type:** Field guide; New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Reported but not validated
- **Discipline:** Wildlife tracking
- **Year published:** 1990

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Footprints and trails drawn for animals in five groups (names as printed in the book; no scientific names appear in the plates). Invertebrates: earthworm, snail, slug, millipede, antlion larva (trail and pit, with the stages of pit construction), caterpillars, termite, ants, mutillid wasp, tenebrionid beetles, ground beetles, African dung beetle (including a beetle rolling a ball of dung), dung beetle, rhinoceros beetle, grasshopper, armoured ground cricket, scorpion and hunting spider. Amphibians: toad. Reptiles: Nile crocodile, monitor, skink, legless skink, lizard, gecko, mole snake, cobra, mamba, puff adder, single-horned adder, python, angulate tortoise and side-necked terrapin. Birds: about 50 species, from a small weaver-family passerine (family Ploceidae), quail, doves and plovers to Ludwig’s, Stanley’s and kori bustards, ostrich, secretarybird, Cape vulture, black eagle, cranes, storks, herons, ibis, coot, geese, gull, jackass penguin, flamingos, white pelican and Cape cormorant. Mammals: about 100 wild species, including shrew, murid, greater canerat, squirrels, giant rat, South African hedgehog, rock dassie, pangolin, springhare, hare, striped weasel, 11 mongooses including suricate, striped polecat, genets, civets, small spotted cat, African wild cat, serval, caracal, cheetah, leopard, lion, foxes, jackals, aardwolf, brown and spotted hyaenas, wild dog, honey badger, porcupine, lesser bushbaby, vervet and samango monkeys, chacma baboon, otters, antbear, elephant, hook-lipped and square-lipped rhinoceroses, hippopotamus, Burchell’s and mountain zebras, warthog, bushpig, giraffe, buffalo and more than 30 antelope from blue duiker to eland. Domestic and introduced animals for comparison: domestic dog (Pomeranian, Great Dane and a Kalahari tracker dog), domestic cat, chicken, donkey, horse, goat, sheep, cattle, Himalayan tahr and European fallow deer. Also drawn as a look-alike: marks made by a leaf rolling in the wind.
- **Location and habitat:** Southern Africa. The acknowledgements name field research on spoor in Etosha (Namibia) and many South African reserves and parks (among them Umfolozi, St Lucia, Giant’s Castle, Tsitsikamma, De Hoop, Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain and Cedarberg), spoor of captive animals in South African zoos, snake parks and private collections, and museum specimens. ǃXõ trackers from Lone Tree and Lokgwabe in Botswana are thanked.
- **Topics:** field guide; footprint identification; trail patterns and gaits (walking, running, hopping, bounding, jumping); snake locomotion (rectilinear, undulatory and sidewinding); front and hind feet (right fore, right hind); spoor on different substrates (hard dusty ground, loose sand, firm ground); spoor variation between individuals; spoor reconstructed from museum specimens; drawings at actual size or reduced with a centimetre scale; basics of tracking (spoor identification, classification of signs, spoor interpretation, principles of tracking, learning to track, dangerous animals).
- **Statistics or models:** None
- **Data type:** New field data: the author’s own drawings of spoor found in the field, from captive animals and from museum specimens (hooves of ungulate specimens traced). Spoor of some rare antelope that were not found in the field were reconstructed from specimens and are marked with a circled S. Inconsistency: the text describes the circled S as marking reconstructed rare antelope spoor, but the plates also put it on some non-antelope drawings (pangolin, greater canerat, giant rat, Meller’s and Selous’ mongooses, redcrested korhaan). Dates of the field work are not given. First published 1990; the free copy is a later impression (fourth impression 2008).

## Synopsis

### 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.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The book is honest about what a drawing can and cannot do: it marks which spoor were reconstructed from specimens rather than seen in the field, and warns that a fixed mental image can lead a tracker to misidentify spoor.

- The look-alike drawing of a leaf rolling in the wind is a useful reminder that not every mark on the ground is made by an animal.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: A Field Guide to the Animal Tracks of Southern Africa (Liebenberg, 1990). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/1990-liebenberg-field-guide-animal-tracks/