Scatology

Another week, another neighbor.  This time it was a white-tailed deer.  No, no investigation this time; there was no need.  They’re very common in the area, I’ve seen them napping in my yard, and they’re the only even-toed ungulates in New York with the exception of the moose (and believe me,  you’re not going to mistake a moose print for that of a deer).  The interesting thing about these prints is that there were two sets of differing sizes.  It looked like I had a mother and juvenile come for a visit.  We used to get them coming around all the time, but again, that was before The Fence.

We’ve been talking a lot about prints, but they’re not the only signs animals leave.  When I was in South Africa we spent a few days looking at tracks.  No snow, but plenty of sand.  A lion print here, a hippo print there, beetle tracks, but we also saw other signs.  Scrapings along the ground from a rhino horn, a bed of flattened grass from a waterbuck, and scat; lots of scat.

Scat, feces, dung, excrement, droppings, poop… you get the point, right?  If you see a print in the dirt you know an animal has been there.  Well, it’s the same with scat.  And similarly to prints, you can often tell which animal left you the “gift” too, though I admit this can be more difficult.  It changes based on diet, which can change based on season and weather patterns.  Anyway, I had such a “gift” the first fall after moving into my house.  It was a large pile; yes, I actually measured.  It wasn’t from any of the animals I’d seen since moving in.  Actually, it was much larger than what would have been left by any neighbors I’d seen.  I had a suspicion and it was confirmed by a biologist friend of mine.  I had a black bear in my yard! 

It must have been after the tasty wild blueberries on the edge of my property.  Berries are a common bear snack in the fall as they try to fatten themselves up for hibernation, and it tends to change the texture of their dung.  You can actually see berry seeds in the scat if you want to look closely enough.  (You all must think I live in the middle of the woods, but really, I’m just on the edge of town and only a few miles from the nearest city.)

Believe it or not, scat is actually very valuable to scientists (and even non-scientists.  A main ingredient in many perfumes comes from whale poop.  Sorry.)  While a print can tell you the species, size, and sometimes the sex of the individual, scat offers a bounty of data.  First and foremost, scat can tell scientists which foods the animal was eating.  It can provide DNA so that scientists can identify the specific individual animal that left the scat.  It can let scientists know if the animal is healthy or ill, or even pregnant, by way of hormone levels, blood, or bacteria left behind.  Toxins in the scat tells of toxins in the environment.

Do you remember when I told you about the dogs used in wildlife/conservation work in my post Canines of Conservation?  Well, the dogs are trained to help out in two different ways.  Sometimes they are taught to smell the animal directly, such as a turtle that may be hiding in the mud.  In other instances the dogs are trained not to sniff out the animal, but the animal’s scat instead; after all, that’s not going to run/fly/swim away.  I talked a bit about this in the Canines post.  Check it out.

National Geographic Magazine actually just published an article on scat and the world of the University of Washington’s Center of Conservation Biology Conservation Canines unit.  If the January 2013 edition is still out, you can go grab a copy and see for yourself!

Canines of Conservation

For thousands of years humans have known that the canine family has them beat in the sense of smell category.  Dogs’ sense of smell, on average, is 100 to 1,000 times better than ours, and depending on the breed, this number can be much higher.  Dogs have been faithful companions to humans for a very long time as they were one of the very first domesticated species.  Often helping with the hunt, these animals have used their powerful sense of smell to aid in locating and retrieving other species.  Now these animals have become many things, including employees.  Their keen sense of smell has been used to sniff out bombs and drugs and some dogs are being trained to sniff out diseases within the human body, such as cancer.

Last week I spoke about Wildlife and Telemetry and how this technology can be used to track wildlife that has been fitted with a transmitter, sometimes over very long distances.  Okay, so what does this have to do with dogs?  You may be surprised.

If dogs are being employed to sniff out drugs and bombs, and are still on occasion being used as hunting companions, we already know what their noses are capable of, and we know that they can find other animals.  This evolutionary skill has now been directed toward aiding biologists in their fight to conserve wildlife.

I’ve only heard, personally, of this being done twice, though that’s not to say there aren’t similar programs elsewhere.  While at a small wildlife conference I attended a gentleman was discussing how his project has trained a dog to locate various species of turtles and to then make his handler aware of their locations.  The dog was trained to find actual turtles, usually hiding under things that would prevent a human from locating them without a very thorough and time-intensive search.  Having done a herpetofaunal survey I can testify to how difficult these animals can sometimes be to find. 

So, why would anyone need to find turtles to begin with?  Well, first and foremost, surveys.  In order to know what’s in an area a survey must be done to identify the species found there.  Once that is done it can be determined how much protection, if any, that location will be granted.  This data can influence building statuses, land purchases, and much more.  Also, sometimes animals need to be removed from a certain area for their own safety, and a sniffer dog can make that search a lot easier.  Being able to locate turtles can also help with other studies, such as allowing them to be found so that a transmitter can be placed on their shell, so measurements and physical data can be collected, etc.

Over at the University of Washington, Professor Samuel Wasser and the University’s Center of Conservation has a team of “Conservation Canines” that aid in research.  They currently have eleven working dogs on their team and each dog has been trained to locate several species, such as wolverines, tigers, owls, bears, wolves, orca, and many more (yes, they can even locate species within water!).

Now, the dogs at the Center of Conservation (which are actually available for hire) have been trained to smell for scat (animal poop), not the actual animal itself.  To explain why this is the focus of the dogs’ training, the Center says:

“Scat (feces) is the most abundant and accessible wildlife product in nature and it contains an enormous amount of genetic, physiological, and dietary information about an animal that can be temporally tied to environmental change.”

The Center uses rescued dogs (huge points for them, in my book) and describes the ideal scat detection dog as a high-energy, obsessive type of dog that could play all day long.  Their reward for finding scat is to play with their favorite toy, usually a ball.

Animals leave scat in locations that they live in or are passing through, and scat won’t run away from you while you’re searching for it.  Once the scat of a certain species is located, researchers can determine the presence of that animal, and can even determine the number of members, and their sexes, of that animal in the area/territory by using DNA testing.  As mentioned in the above quote, scat provides much data for researchers and is far less bothersome to the actual species to locate.

The use of dogs and their powerful noses can and has been a benefit to the wildlife conservation field.  It allows researchers yet another tool to save lives.  It’s a win-win, for the canines and the wildlife, and that’s a recipe for success.