Our tracking circle—artist, scientist, librarian, rabbi, teacher, writer—gathers around our leader’s open palm. With unwavering focus, we train our collective curiosity and intellect on what a kindergartener would call poop. We use the scientific term: scat.
What animal left rounded, dark brown bundles here in the dunes?
“They kind of look like Tootsie Rolls,” says our leader, Jim Sullivan, author of Dirt Time: Finding Meaning in Nature. Breaking apart a single pellet, he points out the crosswise striations. Inside, the texture resembles gray-green felt.
“Chopped hair, matted and digested,” he explains. We spot a single whisker—perhaps a rabbit’s—from last night’s dinner.
“Coyote?” one tracker ventures. Jim shakes his head. “Nope. Coyote scat usually has a line that cuts across at about 45 degrees. Plus, there’d be more fur.” The intestines of these free-ranging predators–up to 28 feet in length—can digest just about anything.
Coyote scat tends to be soft, mushy and, if they’ve been eating meat, blackened by the blood of their prey. What Jim holds is different—firm, tightly packed and reeking of an acrid feline odor. It came from a bobcat.
A few days later, I discover dark, tubular scat with a pointy end outside my back door. Drawing on my newfound knowledge, I recognize its maker as a fox. The next day, I find another pile on the driveway. Without a doubt, the fox is claiming its turf.
“Foxes like to poop in visible places, often on top of scat from other animals, including coyotes and even mountain lions,” Jim notes. “It may be a territorial marker, but it also feels like graffiti.”
When multiple animals contribute droppings to the same location, the resulting latrine becomes a kind of community bulletin board—crammed with personal data and advertisements. With a single whiff, animals can identify each other’s species, sex, age, health, sexual readiness, mood, recent meals and travel routes.
“Smell-tracking animals can extract more meaning from scat faster and more accurately than even the most skilled humans,” Jim says. But advances in molecular biology are offering scientists a precise, non-invasive way to study animals in their habitats.
By extracting DNA from feces, researchers can identify individuals, trace genetic diversity and estimate population sizes. Hormone levels in scat can reveal stress, reproductive cycles and pregnancy—critical data for conservation.
Identifying where and when scat appears helps in mapping the migratory routes and territorial ranges of animals, such as brown bears, forced out of their usual territory by fires, development or climate change.
Scat can also offer early warnings of diseases, including parasites and bacteria that may infect domestic animals—another reason to handle it with care. Jim’s advice: use a stick rather than your hands to break scat apart. If you must touch it, wear gloves or apply hand sanitizer immediately afterward.
Next time you come upon a pile of poop, resist the temptation to turn up your nose—at least figuratively. Overlooked and under-appreciated, nature’s least glamorous artifact can reveal invaluable secrets from the hidden world of wildlife–one dropping at a time.
A sad post-script: The absence of scat also can convey a message—and a warning. Earlier this summer I found the body of a beautiful gray fox, with no visible signs of attack or injury, on our street. An animal control officer speculated that it had eaten a mouse or a vole that had ingested rat poison. This apex hunter had fallen victim to a deadlier predator: humans.
Photo Sources: Jim Sullivan, Don Preisler-UCDavis
