How To Track African Animals

I have just got back from delivering a talk on how to successfully track African animals in the bush, to a bunch of 5 year olds.  The challenge was not that they did not understand the difference between an antelope and a deer, or that an elephant weighs the equivalent of six short wheeled landrovers (6,000kg), the problem was trying to answer all the questions that were fired at me.  It was inspirational.  By the way, the height of an elephant is 2.5 times the circumference of the hind foot and there are four toes on the front foot and three on the back.

We went through various tracking techniques such as being quiet, remaining down wind of the animal you are following, looking for other signs of the animals you are tracking such as faeces, broken twigs, scraps in the ground and reading the movements of other nearby animals.  I then gave information about twelve African animals and presented the challenge to match up twelve footprints with the twelve animals.  Most of them got over half right, which was pretty impressive.  Why don't you pit your wits against them and see how good you are?  Are You An Ace Tracker?

And for those of you who are still wondering about the difference between an antelope and a deer - antelopes have horns which are permanent, whilst deer have antlers that are shed annually.