The Dung Trail

Photograph by Dave M. Augeri

The benefits of scat analysis are easily transferred from one species to another. Dave Augeri was seeking sun bear droppings in the remaining tropical rain forests of Sumatra when he encountered wild elephants, which often compete with the bears for food in this critical but fast-disappearing habitat. Soon he turned his attention from sun bear scat to elephant dung—and amassed the first substantive population estimates of Sumatran elephants, based primarily on dung count surveys.

Thar She Blows

Photograph courtesy Center for Whale Research

Specially trained "scat detection" dogs can hone in on droppings from a variety of species, even if some leavings are no bigger than a sesame seed (courtesy of pocket mice)—or as big as a whale's. Tucker, who works with biologist Sam Wasser, can scent killer whale scat floating on the ocean over a nautical mile away.

Photograph courtesy Center for Whale Research

Bears Do What in the Woods?

Photograph by Kathy Millani

Volunteers working for the Wildlife Land Trust collect grizzly bear scat in Montana's Centennial Valley, hoping to better determine if the animals use wildlife corridors that cross private property. The canine detectives, supplied by the organization Working Dogs for Conservation, have also been trained to nose out deposits left by black bears, wolves, wolverines, and cougars.

One Plop at a Time

Photograph by Sabrina Locatelli

Fecal pellets mark the presence of duikers, various species of small woodland antelopes, in the forests of Cameroon. Biologist Mary Gonder and her team collect the samples, integrate the DNA into existing population genetics databases, and see more clearly how rivers, by carving the forest into many fragmented habitats, have long been shaping the distribution patterns of duikers and other animals in Central Africa.

Discriminating Nose

Photograph by Juan Pablo Zurano

Working in the forests of northeastern Argentina, Train, a four-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever, can make fine olfactory distinctions between the scats left by any one of several major predators, including jaguar, puma, and ocelot, still prowling the remaining thickets. His partner, biologist Karen DeMatteo, wants to learn how large a tract of unbroken territory the various species require to establish better wildlife corridors.

Sweet Smell of Success

Photograph courtesy Working Dogs for Conservation

Wicket, a black lab mix,
 seems comfortable enough surrounded by bags of bear scat. One of Working Dogs for Conservation's stars (he once found 52 scats in a single day), Wicket possesses the single-minded intensity that detection dogs need to succeed. For some obvious reasons, they don't always make good house pets.

Ghostly Traces

Photograph by Jan Janecka

Stretching far into the distance, Mongolia's barren hills are home to Asia's most elusive predators, snow leopards. So seldom are they seen that only the genetic analysis of scat collected by Dr. Jan Janecka's transect team revealed that several of the beautiful cats actually lived on this ridge. Such noninvasive sampling methods are ideally suited for studying the distribution and habits of these cryptic yet endangered creatures.

Sealing the Deal

Photograph by Courtney Vashro

Marine ecologist Dash Maslund found that studying seals off the coast of Maine was dirtier than she had expected. On Mount Desert Rock, she spent her days either beachcombing for seal dung or examining her gatherings in a marine research lab under less than ideal conditions. In summer there was no electricity or running water (and only an outhouse for her own use).

Cat Scat

Photograph by Steve Winter

Bruiser, a chocolate Labrador retriever, noses tiger leavings in Bhutan. It’s a world away from the fragmented forests of Belize, where alongside wildlife biologist Claudia Wultsch Bruiser is usually seeking different kinds of cat scat—that left by mountain lions, ocelots, margays, jaguarundi, and especially by jaguars. Because they roam so widely and are active mostly at twilight, jaguars have long proved a challenge to study. But in order to mark their territories, they choose prominent locations in which to leave scrapes—and feces.

Waste Not

Photograph by Andy Maser

It's not just for science that members of the Elephant Ivory Project field staff collect samples of elephant dung in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—it's for conservation as well. The staff hopes to curb the illegal killing of the pachyderms for their tusks. By filling critical gaps in a DNA map of elephant distribution, they are providing law enforcement authorities with a reference tool against which to match DNA gleaned from seized shipments—the better to pinpoint poaching hotspots.