The art of Tracking

You've heard me speak often of "tracking" the lions. I've realized that I have not touched on just what this means. In the process I've learnt to notice everything and miss nothing. Again adding to my heightened senses since I've arrived. The art of tracking has been said to be the origin of science and represents a crucial step in human evolution (the art of tracking, as practised by contemporary trackers of the Kalahari, is a science that requires fundamentally the same intellectual abilities as modern physics and mathematics [Liebenberg, 1990] it may even be argued that physicists think like trackers).



I can't begin to provide a mere (if that) glimpse into the complexity involved in the process by which indigenous peoples track and hunt animals but I can at least share with you what I've learnt and the intellectual exercise of tracking which depends on scientific, spatial, and symbolic thinking. Tracking involves much more then just looking for prints, "spoor" may include tracks, scat, feathers, kills, scratching posts, trails, drag marks, sounds, scents, marking posts, the behavior of other animals, habitat cues, and any other clues about the identity and whereabouts, we read the visual clues left behind, we look at the surrounding area of the tracks, we listen for signs, like chirping squirrels, or birds warning calling. We look for flattened grass, and which direction it folds down, even animal waster like buffalo poo and the direction it fell as they move off. We develop hypotheses about what the animals were doing when they left these clues. We make predictions about what the animals are likely to do next which direction the lions will head based on where we left them the night before.

• Spatial thinking. When you walk, only some parts of your foot make contact with the ground—the tips of the toes, the ball of the foot, the heel. So a footprint doesn’t look exactly like the foot that makes it forcing one to think about three-dimensional objects: What parts of an animal’s foot will leave a mark on the ground? and the properties of the ground’s surface—be it hard sand, soft sand or muddy—influence the shape of the print?

• Symbolic thought. To reason about animal tracks, I have to understand that a sign (squiggly marks in the dust) stands for something entirely different (a living snake. Providing and developing an understanding of symbols.


Litrally when trying to find the lions in the morning we look on the road for fresh lion tracks/prints and we follow them. Sounds easy enough, but I assure you while sometimes it leads us right to them, often it leads us in circles, and I swear they are messing with us.


Lion tracks can be easily mistaken for hyena tracks or leopard and so we often have to get out to look closely to be sure. The lion track has three lobes at the heel while the hyena has only two.































Hippo tracks are hard to miss


















Leopard track












Elephant Track