The sites are warnings to intruders, smelly “No Trespassing” signs. In the same ways your dog demarcates its turf, wolves, coyotes, and foxes squirt urine on rocks and trees and dump piles to establish their home ranges. Most scat isn’t dropped willy-nilly along the trail, Dr. Raptors and even crows and kingfishers cough up pellets that contain all the bones, fur, and feathers of the previous day’s dinner. That means that if you’re in predator country and you don’t see much bone in the droppings, you’re looking at traces left by a cougar or bobcat.
On the other hand, wild felids, or cats, digest about 90 percent of the bones they eat canids (wolves, for example) process only 80 percent. In autumn, bears leave behind colorful piles (often purplish in hue) laden with nuts, berries, seeds, and other edibles high in protein and fat. An oily summer pile indicates that trout from local spawning streams topped the menu. A large pile of hair-filled poop in spring suggests a grizzly that, after its long winter’s nap, has gorged on meat-probably bison, moose, deer, or elk. To verify, correlate the scat with the size of the hoofprints males’ tracks are larger, up to 61?2 inches long.Īnimal scat also tells you what food has been eaten. With moose, for instance, if the nuggets are elongated, chances are they were left by a female. Geist, you can decipher what feathered or furred creature left the calling card, whether it’s predator or prey, and its gender. “Scat can tell us plenty about an animal,” says Valerius Geist, Ph.D., a retired mammalogist from the University of Calgary, Alberta, who for years has studied the spoor and footprints of Canadian Rockies‘ animals.
Nonetheless, it does illustrate an important point: Wildlife excrement speaks volumes about your favorite wilderness if you open your eyes-to say nothing of your mouth-to the messages before you. Now, whether this is a vanishing art passed from parent to child, or merely a campfire tale meant to be told at mealtime, your guess is as good as mine. Assessing the delicacies of the dung supposedly helps the tundra dweller age an accompanying track, and thus determine how close the critter is and where it’s headed.
Such a bond with the Earth also breeds expert tracking skills, among which is a distinctive, albeit unsavory, technique used when a hunter comes upon a steaming, moist pile of animal scat: He pops a piece in his mouth. Legend has it that the Inuit people of Arctic Canada are so in tune with the land, they can predict the lay of a snowflake before it hits the ground. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
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