Tracks
Tracks
Studying animals often means relying on indirect evidence like tracks left in soft substrates.
Learning Objective: Analyze animal tracks based on shape, size, and location, identifying species with track evidence.
Animals leave tracks when they move over surfaces. Snails and slugs leave a line of mucus. Bears and elk crush plants they walk over. Snakes can leave a body line over sand.
Animal tracks most frequently refers to footprints, imprints left in soft substrates. Some people refer to these footprints as tracks, and other signs of movement as “traces.”
Casts in plaster and plastic are used to study tracks that are not readily available. Note the different sizes and shapes of these tracks.
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