What’s That Scat?

What’s That Scat?

What’s That Scat?

4 minute read.
As we are out enjoying some of the many trails the Yukon has to offer, we often have to watch our step to make sure we’re not putting our boots in something smelly! These unexpected trail obstacles can be great indicators of whose habitat we are walking into, what they are eating, and how they are digesting it. Just like us, many animals have dynamic diets, and will eat what is available. Scat can be interesting but can also spread diseases, even to humans, so it should be looked at and not touched, especially by our furry companions.

Bears

Black bears are opportunistic omnivores who will eat whatever food they can find, including fish, fruit, meat, insects, and herbs and grasses. Grizzlies have a similar diet, but tend to favour high-energy meat and insects more than the smaller black bears. Like their diets, bear scat appearance is quite varied, and often contains fragments of their last meal, like seeds, bits of berries, or small animal bones. Wildlife Interpreter Maureen recounts seeing a landscape covered in red wine-coloured piles that were actually scat from grizzlies that had eaten a lot of cranberries!

Light brown bear scat with seeds visible.

Bears are relatives of mammalian carnivores, they have a digestive system similar to carnivores, without a cecum or extended large intestine. This limits how efficiently they can process leafy plant material and they must eat a lot if they are relying on these foods, which is common in the spring. As a result, when a bear eats a lot of plant material their scat often has a green tinge from the undigested grasses or a fibrous appearance. Typically, their scat is brown or black and tapered, though sometimes it can appear as more globular if it is loose. Grizzly scat tends to be a bit wider and larger piles than black bear scat. It can be hard to distinguish between the two, but both should make a hiker cautious of the trail ahead. Remember bear spray and noisemakers and stay bear safe!

Left to right: Older bear scat; bear scat that is darker brown in colour with grasses visible.

If you’re interested in getting involved in bear research, the Operation Ursus Research using Scat (OURS) project is aimed at estimating the Yukon grizzly and black bear populations using DNA available in bear scat. Lucile leads the study and shares the project story Bear Poo and You with YWP.

Canines

Foxes, wolves, and coyotes are more exclusively carnivorous than bears, but may occasionally eat berries and seeds. Their digestive system is similar to that of a bear, as is their scat. Wolves’ stomachs are specially adapted to hold a lot of food so that after a hunt they can get their share of the reward. Additionally, their stomach is very acidic to kill off any pathogens in the meat. It is tubular and tapered and may contain bits of bones, fur, or berries. It may be lighter, as it varies from tan to dark brown in colour. It is, however, smaller than bear scat: fox scat is about 1.25 cm in diameter, coyote scat is about 2 cm, and wolf scat is usually at least 2.5 cm in diameter.

Wolf scat with fur visible.

There will likely be much less of it as well. Foxes often defecate in obvious areas to mark their territory. The Wildlife Preserve exists as an ecosystem within a larger ecosystem and foxes are one of the many wild animals that visit. They seem to like to use the boardwalks at the front cabin to do their business!

Foxes often defecate in obvious places to mark their territory.

Left photo credit: L.Caskenette.

Feline – Lynx

Unlike generalist bears and canines, lynxes are specialists. Snowshoe hares are their primary food source, and can make up 75% of their winter diet. Meat is highly digestible, meaning that most of what is consumed can be broken down and absorbed easily. Lynx digestive systems, therefore, have shorter small intestines relative to body size and less developed caecum than canines.

Lynx scat of varying ages among grass.

Their scat is black, tubular and tapered, and does not have so much undigested material as the bears or canines. It is also very smelly. Like a house cat, they will cover their scat with dirt or snow, probably to hide their presence from nearby animals. Also like house cats, they often defecate in the same latrine over and over, which can be seen in our lynx habitat.

Lynx, like house cats, often poop in the same places every time. This is one of the latrines in the lynx habitat at the Preserve.

Cervids

The Yukon has a great variety of cervids (antler bearing animals) or members of the deer family. Their diets, digestive systems, and scat have many similarities. In general, they produce uniform, dark brown or black oval-shaped pellets, which result from uniform movements of smooth muscles in the large intestine and its sphincters.

From left to right: Caribou, moose, mule deer and elk. Photo Credit: L.Caskenette & J.Paleczny.

Their diets are often high in fibrous, dry tree materials like leaves and twigs, which is why their feces forms pellets. If they are eating more grasses, in the summer, it may appear softer and more clumpy. Cervids are all ruminants which means that their stomachs have four compartments: the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum and the abomasum.  This allows for fermentation by bacteria and other processes that break down vegetation. This is part of the reason that cervid scat does not have as much undigested material as the carnivores’, despite their plant diet having less digestible material. In addition, they will regurgitate their food and chew it again, also called chewing their cud!

Left to Right: Soft caribou scat clumps together versus caribou scat in pellet form.

Deer pellets are small, about 1 cm in diameter, and are left in piles of many pellets. They defecate an average of 13 times per day! Elk scat is similar but 1-1.5 cm in diameter, and moose scat is even larger at 1.5-2 cm in diameter. Deer and elk pellets are rounder than moose pellets.

Softer deer scat often clumps together as seen here.

Moose are more strictly browsers, that eat only tree materials, so mostly their pellets are harder. Caribou scat appears somewhat more rough than deer or moose scat. It is often in harder pellet form in the winter when they eat a lot of lichens and sedges. In the summer, when their diet switches to grasses and vegetation with a high moisture content, their scat often forms larger soft clumps.

Moose scat in pellet form, darker brown because it’s older.

Bovids

There are also a wide variety of bovids (horn bearing animals) in the Yukon. Our mountain sheep, mountain goats, muskox, and bison are all ruminants, just like the cervids. They are all herbivores who eat a variety of grasses, sedges, seedlings, and leaves.

Left to Right: Muskox, bison, mountain goat, thinhorn sheep. Photo Credit: L. Caskenette

Muskox, mountain goats, and thinhorn mountain sheep also form pellet scat, even when their diets consist largely of grass. That’s because their digestive tracts are highly evolved to reabsorb as much water as possible, likely an adaptation to their arid alpine (goats and sheep) and tundra (muskox) habitats.

Sheep scat forms pellets.

Goats have varied diets that includes browse, shrubs, lichens, grasses, and even trees. Their alpine foraging sites may be sparse, which doesn’t allow them to be picky eaters. Muskoxen eat grasses, forbs (herbaceous flowering plants), and willows, which they often have to dig out from the frozen arctic ground by smashing the permafrost with their heads and pawing the ice pieces out of the way. Mountain sheep eat mostly grasses and some other low growing sedges.

Muskox scat.

Bison scat is distinct from all the other ruminants mentioned above, because it forms an indistinct pile. Their diet is also primarily grasses and other low-lying herbaceous plants, but they may eat some willows and twigs. Grasses would make their scat more loose, but we’re taking suggestions for what makes their scat so different from the other grass-loving bovids!

Bison patty.

Hopefully after hearing all of these scat facts you can see scat as more than just something gross to be avoided on the side of the trail. It can tell you who’s habitat you are in, but also what they have been eating. It is interesting to watch it change throughout the season. Of course biologists may be able to find out way more about an animal through their scat, for instance genetic samples or presence of pathogens. There is so much to learn from the scat around us!
Although all the different scat we explored above is only a small number of animals, all species do it and we encourage you to:

1. Explore other species scat/defecation/poop – whatever you want to call it!

2. Pack out yours and your furry companions (yours domestic canines) poo in the backcountry and wilderness places you visit!

3. Sing the Scat Rap Song!  

It starts with an S and it ends with a T
It comes out of you
and it comes out of me
I know what you’re thinking
But don’t call it that
Let’s be scientific, and call it SCAT
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

You can find it on the ground
It’s usually colored brown
It is shaped in a mound
It is a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

You can smell it with your nose
It’s gonna decompose
It’s where the fungus grows
It is a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

Birds flying through the air
Look out! Beware!
It landed in your hair
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

I was hiking through the fog
When I saw a big log
It came from a dog
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

I was tired of TV
I was checking out the trees
I could smell it on the breeze
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

I know it’s kind of gory
But it’s a true story
It marks territory
It is a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

I picked up a chicken
And something was drippin’
It wasn’t finger-lickin’
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

A squirrel ate a nut
Digested in its gut
It came out of its butt
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

If you park your car
By the woods or a field
You might find something on your windshield
Full of berries
Both purple and white
You just got bombed by a bird in flight
It was a piece of scat
(PIECE OF SCAT!)

Photo Credit: Sophia Slater or as otherwise credited.
References:

Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti) sign. ADFG. 

Blood, D.A. Mountain sheep. Hinterlands Who’s Who. 

Blood, D.A. (2000). Mountain Goat in British Columbia. British Columbia Ministry of Environment Land and Parks.

Bosch, G., Hagen-Plantinga, E., & Hendriks, W. (2015). Dietary nutrient profiles of wild wolves: Insights for optimal dog nutrition? British Journal of Nutrition, 113(S1), S40-S54. doi:10.1017/S0007114514002311

Keith, L.B. Canada lynx. Hinterland’s Who’s Who. 

Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center (2018, June 25). What scat can tell you about your wildlife neighbors. CSERC

Costello, C.M., Cain, S.L., Pils, S., Frattaroli, L., Haroldson, M.A., & van Manen, F.T. (2016). Diet and macronutrient optimization in wild Ursids: A comparison of grizzly bears with sympatric and allopatric black bears. PLoS ONE, 11(5).

Gray, D.R. Muskox. Hinterland’s Who’s Who. 

Hatch, K., Roeder, B., Buckman, R., Gale, B., Bunnell, S., Eggett, D., Auger, J., Felicetti, L., & Hilderbrand, G. (2011). Isotopic and gross fecal analysis of American black bear scats. Ursus, 22(2), 133–140. 

Howard, W.T., Hutjens, M., Kilmer, L., Linn, A., Otterby, D., & Shaver, R. (2021). The ruminant digestive system. University of Minnesota Extension

Winand, C.J. (2008, September). Deer Pelletology. Buckmasters Magazine

Sophia Slater

Sophia Slater

Wildlife Interpreter & Animal Care Assistant

Sophia is one of the Interpretive Wildlife Guides and animal care assistants at the Preserve. She is new to the Yukon and moved here from Ontario, where she just graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Nipissing University. Hiking mountains is her newfound passion while she’s here, and she’s hoping to summit as many as she can this summer. At the preserve, she loves getting to talk to and learn from guests who come from all over the Yukon and beyond about their experiences with wildlife.

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Bear Poo and You: learning about Yukon Bears with the OURS research project

Bear Poo and You: learning about Yukon Bears with the OURS research project

Bear Poo and You: learning about Yukon Bears with the OURS research project

This article was made possible thanks to support from the Environmental Awareness Fund. Engage and educate yourself in this 10-part blog series, about Yukon Biodiversity.
Banner Photo:  Grizzly bear scat.  iNaturalist OURS page Photo Credit Lucile Fressigné
15 minute read –
If you, like me, grew up in the Yukon, bear awareness training has been part of your life since you were a wee child. Some combination of videos and booklets have let you know that yes, bears sure are out there and this is what you should do in response to a variety of bear encounters. But here’s the thing, just how aware of bears are you really? The Yukon is renowned for its bears but there are actually some gaps in our bear knowledge, particularly when it comes to just how many bears are actually out there! Population size is important for studying everything from the spatial distribution to the health of a species, but there hasn’t been a bear survey in the Yukon since the 1980s. Unless the Yukon bears are both immortal and not having babies, that information is a touch outdated.

Lucile Fressigné is leading an on-going study that seeks to fill in this gap in bear population knowledge. Starting in 2020, she started a community-based project to survey the Yukon’s bear populations in a creative way that also doesn’t bother the local bears: by collecting their scat! That’s right, Operation Ursus Research using Scat (OURS) is aimed at updating and providing a scientifically reliable estimate of the population size of Yukon bear species using a non-invasive DNA-based method that relies on scat samples. Last year, the study focused on collecting samples in the Mount Lorne, Marsh Lake, Tagish, and Fish Lake areas of the territory. Fressigné offers Yukon residents the opportunity to be part of this project and help build this sample collection by offering free collection kits that can be dropped off at community centres in the study areas. Yes, you too can take part in bear science!

OURS aims to get an estimate on both grizzly (Ursus arctos) and black bear (Ursus americanus) populations. These bears tend to be especially difficult to inventory and monitor as a low number of bears will occur over a large home range and they tend to be avoidant by nature. Grizzlies are the largest of the two and are very distinctive with their dished face profile and defined shoulder hump. They are often referred to as “brown bears” but their colours can range from white to almost black. They most commonly have “grizzled fur”: a deep brown with lighter ends. Apparently, no one told them that frosted tips went out of style in the early 2000s.

Grizzly Bear iNaturalist Photo Credit L to R:  Cameron Eckert, Bdobrowo, and OURS Facebook page.

In 2018, grizzlies in western Canada were designated as a species of special concern. This means that they are a species that does not meet the criteria of an endangered or threatened species but is particularly vulnerable, and could easily become endangered, threatened, or extirpated. This rapid loss of population could happen from a variety of factors such as restricted distribution, low or declining numbers, and/or specialized habitat needs or limits. One of the many benefits of having a population estimation for grizzly bears is that it can help provide a basis for a proactive conservation strategy.
Black bears, as the name would suggest, are most often black but can also be blonde, grey, cinnamon, and brown (in which case, the name is very misleading). They have a straight face profile and lack the shoulder hump present in grizzlies. They also lack the species of special concern status but this doesn’t necessarily mean there are more black bears in the Yukon because, like grizzlies, the last time there was a black bear population estimate was in the 90s. Without an updated population estimate, we really don’t know if we should be concerned about them as well.

Black Bear iNaturalist Photo Credit L to R: Cameron EckertYukonAnnie, John Meikle

At first blush, scat analysis might not seem like the most appealing method for studying bear populations but there are a lot of advantages to this method. First of all, it’s incredibly non-invasive when compared with methods like radio collaring. In order to get a collar on a bear, they have to be tranquilized which can result in the injury or even death of the bear (bummer!). The injection site can get infected, the radio collar can get snagged, and there’s a lag between when the dart hits the bear and when the tranquiliser takes effect. During this lag time, bears can run out into a body of water where they can’t be recovered because ursine lifeguards are not a thing.

Hair snags are another non-invasive method for population estimations. This is the most common method of population analysis and it’s done by placing a tantalizing lure near a string of barbed wire. When an animal comes for the lure, they leave a cheeky tuft of hair behind. However, scat analysis doesn’t need a lure/barbed wire setup, you can find it everywhere bears dwell, and it is very easy to identify whereas hair tufts can be tricky to spot. Odds are, if you spend some time in the woods, you’ve come across them before. And believe it or not, there is a ton of information to be gained from analysing bear body waste!

Bear Scat.  iNaturalist Photo Credit L to R:  Grizzlyann, Gerald Haase, Lucile-OURS.

Because scat is found wherever the bear decided to leave it behind, it tells you where and generally when the bear has been so it’s very useful for identifying bear habitats. The DNA analysis technique used on these scat samples is called Genotyping in Thousands by Sequencing (GT-seq). This method can extract information regarding the species, sex, and individual identity of the bear. Knowing this poop-extracted bear information can help scientists track the movement and migration of individual bears as well as trends in bear parentage! Scat also contains cortisol (the stress hormone) which can be used to monitor the relative stress levels of the local bear populations. This can be really important for bear conservation because it can tell us whether bears in certain areas are experiencing more stress than others (are bears living by highways more stressed than those that don’t, for example).

We are generally aware of what bears are eating but scat analysis can give us specific statistics regarding how often and how much bears are consuming of different foods. It also helps chart changes in diet. If one food is present one year and absent the next, this might indicate environmental changes that made this food source inaccessible. OURS can also see how bears are affecting their food sources in turn. As part of this project, Fressigné is partnered with the Kwanlin Dün First Nation who are interested in how or if bear predation is affecting the declining moose population in the Fish Lake area.

The goal of the first season of research was to test the community-based sampling method and generally gauge the public’s interest in the project. It was an opportunity to implement new genetic technology on the collected samples and to test whether the scat collection methodology would yield enough useable DNA. It also aimed to identify the presence and distribution of bears in the sampling areas. Moving into the second season of sampling, OURS is going to adopt a more rigorous sampling method by hiring students to run survey transects in the study area and by partnering with more First Nations and groups that are involved in traveling and exploring through the Yukon wilderness. This includes hunters and trappers, tourism companies, mining companies, summer camps, schools, and very lost tourists. Just kidding on the last one, being a tourist is both dangerous and illegal at the moment.

The OURS project is primarily about providing a population estimate but it’s more than just a bear abacus. Studying the genetic markers in bear scat reveals information about the genetic diversity in bear populations. This work also helps emphasise how important it is to maintain this diversity in order to keep these vulnerable apex species healthy and stable. The groovy analysis from these scat samples will also provide tons of info about bear stress levels, parentage, and the trends and impacts of bear predation. Who knew poo could be so educational?

Bear Scat.  iNaturalist Photo Credit: 1st Alisonp, 2nd and 3rd Grizzlyann

The project is important for future bear conservation efforts and not just because it gives us an approximate bear count. This study can be used to monitor the impact of climate change on bear behavior and population trends. Continued bear scat surveys can also reveal critical/preferential habitats for bears, and lead to the restoration of these habitats or the creation of protected areas that would minimize human/bear conflicts. Which is great because I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to fight a bear. But in all seriousness, these types of conflicts tend to end badly for the bears so it’s best if they can be mitigated or avoided entirely.

As you can see, there are a lot of benefits to the non-invasive, cost effective, kind of smelly, and highly informative research method of scat sampling. This method will hopefully allow the OURS project to collate an estimate of our Yukon bear populations and improve the scope of our bear-related knowledge. If you want to learn more about the project, check out the OURS Facebook and iNaturalist page and consider, come this spring, being part of the bear bowel movement collection crew!

OURS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OURS.lf
OURS iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/operation-ursus-research-using-scat

Joelle Ingram

Joelle Ingram

Human of Many Talents

Joelle is a former archaeologist, former wildlife interpreter, and a full-time random fact enthusiast. She received her master’s degree in anthropology from McMaster University. One of the four people who read her thesis gave it the glowing review “It’s a paper that would appeal to very specific group of people,” which is probably why only four people have read it. Her favourite land mammal is a muskox, her favourite aquatic mammal is a narwhal. She thinks it’s important that you know that.

867-456-7400
 info@yukonwildlife.ca

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