Track of the Week 4

Note:
I am changing the mechanics of this series a little. I'm feeling like the number of posts I've been making in this series is overwhelming my other posts a bit. Instead of having a separate analysis post I will put my answers inline on this post at the end of the week (with a little show/hide answer button so you won't have to see the answer if you don't want to). I've gone back and adjusted the previous couple of entries to work that way as well.

Scene:
We found these tracks in a dry (but still soft) mud puddle adjacent to a road at the edge of a forest and a meadow in central Idaho at about 6000 feet elevation.



Questions:
I suspect these tracks are going to be a little on the difficult side too. I'm hoping to stock up on some more interesting sets of larger animal tracks to mix in soon.

1. What groups of animals might have made these tracks (or which groups of animals do you think you can eliminate)?

If we make a very wide list, with this size range one might include medium-small rodents, weasel, mole and I think that is about it as far as mammals. The trick comes in considering non-mammals, so then we might add in birds, reptiles and amphibians.

I don't see how I could make those tracks fit into bird tracks though, so if we mark them off the list we are left with a set that is fairly reasonable to look up in a field guide.

2. Can you separate out fronts and hinds, lefts and rights?

The hind feet are the row of dots on the right side (relative to the picture rather than the tracks) of each track group. It's interesting to look at the feet of these animals and see where those dots are coming from. The three more finger-like marks are from the front foot.

Lefts and rights are pretty easy if you can tell which direction the animal is moving, and here it is moving from the rights side of the picture to the left.

3. What species?

These are toad tracks. I was thinking they were western toad because I didn't think there were other toads in the Pacific Northwest, but in a brief scan on the Internet it appears there may be other options there.

There were a lot of toad tracks and scat in that area which surprised me since it is fairly hot and dry with cold winters.

I don't have enough experience with frog tracks to tell you how they are different other than that frogs generally hop and toads generally walk (though both can do either).

4. Bonus: What made the pattern in the middle? How specific can you get?

I can't get very specific on this myself. Some sort of arthropod. I think it is interesting how it has quite a bit of bilateral symmetry.

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