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All Done Guys!! <Look Up>

Well done

Hey...first question is supposed to be easy Anyway, can't wait for the next, I LOVE SPOORSIGNS!

Awesome thread RJ!!!!

Great thread and very interesting!!

Thanks Guys!

GameSpotter, This isn't a quiz or anything!!! There was no question!

Next one will we up soon!!

OK...but then I want to ask you. Please put it up, give us 24 hours to guess, assume and work it out together like we did (or didn't ). Much more fun and that way we learn it quicker

If thats OK

I see no problem with that!

Heres the next one



A fairly common site in the Winter months, is that of a Giraffe often throwing it's head back, and 'staring' up at the sky. Apon closer expection, one can often see large amounts of saliva dribbling from the mouth, as the animal chews away at some mysterious object!

The object that they have swirling around within, Is a bone, or bone fragment! These are picked up in the bush, and chewed on, as during the winter months, the Giraffe are unable to get trace elements such as calcium and phosphorous from their herbivorious diet. So they get these elements by chewing on the calcium and phosphorous rich bones.

This phenomenon is known as Osteophagia(Bone Eating)

And the Next Next One!



So...How do Giraffe groom for these Tick's??!

These animals have long necks and legs, which aid them in feeding ..But have no use when it comes to grooming ...Their hind legs cannot reach to scratch the hind neck, ears or face! And the mouth cannot reach the belly and inner leg area....Which is where these ticks thrive!

The ticks are removed from the neck, by scratching it against large exposed tree branches, and is removed from the groin area, by walking straight over small trees, especially that of the genus Acacia, to remove some of the parasites, or to ease the irritation caused by them!

Seen here in KNP!





How satisfied does he look??!

Indeed he do

Thanks for these brilliant information Rusty Justy

PLEASURE &Thank you for reading it Pumbaa

INSERT # 4

Another Spoor!!



And the Answer!! (Coming Soon)


So heres the way to look at it..............As before we can see it has a heel pad, and four toes.....This points us towards a predator of sorts.

Now we have to distinguish whether it is the spoor of a cat, or of a dog!

If we look at the heel-pad, we can see that it is kidney shaped, and bi-lobed!
The bi-lobed part should immediately rule cats out of your mind!... You then try the X rule(Described in the first insert)........As you can see, the yellow X cuts through the toes, and this rules out a dog spoor.

We have illiminated both True Dog and True Cat spoors......Which leaves us with all the Suborders found within the Orders Caniformia and Feliformia!

As we can see by the light blue shape, the toes are not round at all, but curved.....This hand in hand with the Green marks, show how closely together the toes are.(A cats toes, were round, with large gaps, and a Dogs toes were elongated with smaller gaps).

Now looking at the heel pad, we see it is somewhat Kidney shaped at the bottom,(The black line is on the lower most lobe, which ever side the lower lobe is, in these animals and many others, is the side of the paw we are looking at) So we have a right hind spoor here Only because I could see the front spoor too while I was there....

Unfortunately I could not find the claws, as the sand was just not soft enough to show it.....

All in all, the Kidney shaped heel pad, Curled toes, that are very close together, and the most likely presence of claws, all leads towards HYAENA!

But now WHICH ONE???!

Distribution obviously plays role........This was found on my property in the Waterberg(Ruling out spotted hyaena) ........Another tell tail sign, is that Brown Hyaenas have a large size difference between their front and hind spoors, where the spotted hyaenas do not! A Brown Hyaenas spoor is also noticabley smaller by a few centimetres......and the brown Hyaena has very long hairs on its legs and feet, unlike the Spottie, and often these show up as scuff marks around the spoor itself!


So we have the Right Hind spoor of a Brown Hyaena-Hyaena brunnea

Why not give us the size to speculate

Evil mr. Rusty justy sir Got a 'backtoe' right?...Lemme think

Very interesting about giraffes RJ...Thanks!!!

And that print looks like lion to me!!!

Thanks RJ for the info on the giraffe - I have never noticed them doing it - will from now on, watch more closely!