Length animal trails in the snowy forest. Animal trails - artificial canals
For the first time in his life, the little gopher crawled out of his hole and saw the world. Florence, Arizona. (Photo by Eirini Pajak | Solent News):
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Orangutan at the Krefeld Zoo, Germany. (Photo by Roland Weihrauch | AFP | Getty Images):
Little rhinoceros
Rhino family in Magdeburg, Germany. This baby was born here on Christmas Eve, December 24th. (Photo by Peter Endig | EPA):
The pile is small!
Meerkats keep warm on a rainy day at the Bangkok Zoo, Thailand. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit | AP):
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Penguin in the pool of the zoo in Frankfurt, Germany. (Photo by Michael Probst | AP):
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It's cold in Europe. Semi-frozen Elbe River in Dresden, East Germany. (Photo by Matthias Rietschel | AP):
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A lion cub plays with a snowball at the Belgrade Zoo, Serbia. (Photo by Alexa Stankovic | AFP | Getty Images):
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African narrow-snouted crocodile. Its size, as a rule, does not exceed 2.5 m, occasionally individuals up to 4 m long are found. It is an endangered species. In Chitwan National Park in Kathmandu, they are bred and released into the wild as adults. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar | Reuters):
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Seagulls, geese and swans search for food together on an embankment in Stralsund, Germany. (Photo by Stefan Sauer | EPA):
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White lions at the Belgrade Zoo, Serbia. (Photo by Marko Djurica | Reuters):
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Snow monkeys
Two Japanese macaques at the Stuttgart Zoo, Germany. This is the northernmost species of monkey in the world, which is also called. (Photo by Franziska Kraufmann | AFP | Getty Images):
Reflections
White hares in the Krasnoyarsk Zoo. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin | Reuters):
Putin
A 1.5 year old tiger named Putin (center) with his sister Anna (left) and mother Katya (right). City of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, February 7, 2012. (Photo by Georgi Licovski | EPA):
When traveling through wild and sparsely populated (by humans) places, you need to learn how to use animal trails.
Who do you think laid paths or roads for camel caravans in the deserts? And in general, how did the caravaners navigate the desert among the constantly changing dunes? It turns out everything is very simple. The caravan necessarily included several donkey guides, who led both the camel caravans and the caravaners themselves to the nearest city, well or oasis along the way. First, the donkeys were led along the caravan route by force, and then the donkeys themselves walked this route along the shortest and most convenient path.
When traveling through wild and sparsely populated (by humans) places, you need to learn how to use animal trails. Instead of breaking your legs through bushes and windfalls, it’s easier to find a suitable path in accordance with the terrain and get where you need to go without any problems. And this applies not only to movement in the taiga, but also in any other wild area. Local animals: hares, deer, wild boars, bears and others are well familiar with the area where they live and over the years have laid their paths in the most convenient places for movement. Along the banks of rivers, lakes, along mountain ranges and through passes, swamps and impenetrable thickets, animal trails are necessarily laid. Often there are several such trails and they are located in parallel.
Animal paths crossing to the other side of a river (stream) do not always indicate a convenient ford for humans, but the paths of beavers, otters, badgers, hares, etc. Although they are wider and more trampled than those of bears and deer, they do not go far and in order not to get lost in three pines, one must often determine the paths by the footprints of the owners of the trail. On the other hand, a well-paved beaver trail indicates the proximity of another body of water or the opportunity to skip straight through a bend in the river, which can also be useful to the traveler in one way or another. Otters are very fond of “straightening” river meanders with paths, and if a traveler walking along a winding path uses such paths, he will greatly shorten his path.
All local animals use animal trails, and it is often difficult to determine who exactly these trails belong to and which animals use these trails more often. One must use the paths in accordance with one’s own logic and immediate needs or benefit for oneself, since the paths can also lead the traveler to salt licks, deer lagoons, caves, watering holes, baths with especially healing mud, to the fortifications (burrows) of some animals, etc. .d.
For example, in case of urgent need, natural salt licks can be used to extract table salt. At reindeer lagoons, females and young (red) deer rest from midges in the (eternal) breeze and from attacks by predators. A traveler on the deer lagoons can have a good look at the immediate surroundings and also take a break from midges, but some trails from the deer lagoons may be impassable for humans. In comfortable caves you can wait out bad weather or even arrange a comfortable, temporary home...
The most convenient paths for traveling over rough terrain are those running along rivers directly near the shore or in lowlands along mountain ridges. But these trails usually follow all the bends of the river (and mountain ridges) and are therefore the longest. “Upper” trails running along the tops of low mountain ranges or elevated banks, along the same rivers, although they are the shortest, have more wind and fewer mosquitoes, but they constantly go up and down. In any case, this is better than making your way through thickets, rubble, or jumping on pebbles among scree.
Special caution when crossing swampy areas. If possible, it is better to bypass the dangerous swamp. Animal trails can also take you to a swamp, with a clear passage through the swamp. But we must not forget that elk and deer pass through swampy places surprisingly easily, and where these animals pass, a person still needs to be extremely careful. When walking through swamps, you need to take a strong three to four meter pole with you. They use a pole to feel the bottom of the path and lean on the pole when they climb out of the quagmire.
You also need to be careful when crossing rivers on ice, following animal tracks. For the same bears and deer, swimming in icy water is a common thing, and visually it is not always possible to determine from the tracks whether an animal has passed or swam through this or that section of the reservoir. Therefore, using the same pole, you first need to check the depth of the reservoir at the crossing point. It is not at all smart to use the paths of semi-aquatic animals to cross water bodies on ice, and it’s clear why.
In the mountains, walking along animal trails, you can end up in snow piles or snow-filled cracks in glaciers. The animals apparently feel the voids of the cracks and simply jump over them. The slightest snow or wind can mask the trail so much that the place where the animal jumped may not be noticed.
And finally, a little humor.
Otters are quite cheerful creatures and love to roll along clay slopes like slides into water. It happens that the slides start quite high, are surrounded by dense vegetation and do not immediately go down. But they look like a very well-trodden path. In addition, this “fun slide” begins with a real trail. You can accidentally mix up the paths, slipping on wet clay is not a problem and then...
By the way, in winter, otters often move from one body of water to another. You can't confuse an otter's track in deep snow. The otter mainly tries to slide on the snow; its legs are strong, but short. So, following the otter's trail, you can get to the nearest body of water in the shortest and most convenient way. At least to where she came from, at least to where she was going.
When walking through the taiga, choose the easiest and most convenient path. You can make your route along a steep slope, through swampy thickets, and through the rubble of half-decayed trees. But it’s better to look around and choose the most convenient option. If you suddenly find an animal trail there, then you have chosen the right path.
Numerous adherents of a healthy lifestyle have chosen the road leading to the AGDS (automatic gas distribution station) almost from the moment it was built. Which is very logical: the place is located just a few kilometers from Petropavlovsk, and in the city itself there is nowhere to safely ride a bicycle or roller skis without the risk of being hit by passing vehicles. There is simply nowhere to run without compensating for the benefits received with the poison from the exhaust gases.
The Gazprom road in this sense is also not the promised land. There are plenty of cars here too. After all, there are two lakes nearby, which rarely go unnoticed by vacationers, not only in the morning and during the day, but for some reason citizens in cars head there in pitch darkness. However, the most experienced local “sportsmen” know the peak times of traffic on this road and the periods when they can relax. Conclusion: although this route is by far the best choice for sports, it is still not intended for active sports. And it is not known when the authorities will take care of the construction of a specialized multi-kilometer asphalt track for cyclists, runners, race walkers and other amateur athletes. Moreover, it is desirable that it be located not far from the city and surrounded by forest.
In the meantime, content with what they have, various athletes observe a lot of interesting things on the track leading to the AGRS. There are foxes running around here, which, judging by their behavior, are beginning to get used to people and are about to be ready to accept food from their hands. There are owls here who curiously watch vacationers while sitting on road signs. Bats glide in the dark, and frogs croak with might and main on the lakes. Finally, not so long ago the howl of a large pack of wolves was heard here, which is difficult to confuse with anything else. But the city is very close...
The Agency for Forestry and Wildlife Protection of the Kamchatka Territory commented on this situation quite calmly. Indeed, wolves are found in these latitudes. But this phenomenon is so rare that experts did not even record traces of animals, but only had eyewitness accounts. The places of mass habitat of wolves closest to Petropavlovsk are the Asachinskoye field and Khodutka. Well, the polar wolf lives, accordingly, in the north of Kamchatka. Those who are inexperienced in the peculiarities of a wolf howl could easily confuse it with the “singing” of a pack of dogs, which are often abandoned here by summer residents. In addition, as it turned out, very nearby there is a whole nursery of northern sled dogs - about fifty heads, including huskies, in whose veins the blood of wolves flows... In any case, conservationists assure that there is nothing to be afraid of: not a single case has been recorded in Kamchatka wolf attacks on humans. The wolf is too unsociable, unlike even the bear, which, in a year that is not very productive for fish, will not disdain anything that moves...
But the presence of foxes should not be surprising. The fact is that in recent years the prices for fox skins have fallen sharply, they have gone out of fashion, and therefore the number of fox hunters has decreased. Nowadays, this lovely animal is killed mainly for fun, which has not stopped the foxes from feeling calmer and expanding their habitat. The animals, of course, are shy, but curiosity and the desire to profit from tasty food often win out, therefore, if you meet a fox on a forest road, you may even be able to feed it almost from your hands.
Bats, according to agency experts, should also not cause much surprise. In Kamchatka they are relatively few in number, but are distributed throughout almost its entire territory. And they prefer places where there are old rotten trees or dead wood, in the cavities of which they prefer to spend daylight hours sleeping. Winged mice live even in Petropavlovsk, and in Elizovo there are simply countless numbers of them.
The origin of frogs in Kamchatka raises certain questions among experts. Yes, we have a lot of frogs, but no one counted their number, since this is not the agency’s tasks. And, in principle, what can they be good for? After all, we don’t live in France or China... So where did they come from? There are at least two versions. First: someone brought them here for fun, but they just multiply. Version two: they got here along with the caviar of carp and grass carp, which were specially settled in Lake Khalaktyrskoye for the natural purification of wastewater from CHPP-2. And spreading caviar throughout the rest of Kamchatka is a piece of cake. And here’s what makes us happy: frogs, as you know, are an indicator of the ecological cleanliness of water bodies. This means that for now we can be calm about many of our natural objects.
In a word, meeting almost any animal on Gazprom’s “health track” is a pleasant and unforgettable moment. And whoever I would absolutely not want to meet is a bear. A runner cannot escape from it, a cyclist can only throw a bicycle at a bear, and still there is no escape. What is the probability of an unpleasant collision? Conservationists never tire of repeating: all of Kamchatka is bear territory. Especially when there is a forest around. This year, bear tracks were seen nearby – in the area of the Lesnaya sports base. Well, many smart books and hundreds of brochures and booklets have been written about how to behave when meeting the owner of the Kamchatka forest. Whoever this knowledge helps will be lucky.
Maria VLADIMIROVA
Where do animal trails lead?
Various animals, invertebrates and vertebrates, moving for a long time in the same directions, form trails. Below we will talk mainly about the paths of animals, as the most common and noticeable. It is with them that the tracker has to deal.
The purpose of the trails is different. Usually trails are in one way or another connected with the nutrition of the animals that build them and who use them.
Many have seen clean, clearly visible paths going in different directions from the cone-shaped anthill of the red wood ant. You can observe how ants hastily and anxiously run along them, either singly, or in groups, or in a continuous stream in one and the other direction, often with prey or with pieces of dry wood twigs, which serve as building material for repairing the anthill. Black garden ants make the same paths. Their underground structures have an exit to the outside in the form of a hole at the top of a cone-shaped ejection of earth. Sometimes such a hole even happens in asphalt. Noticeable paths go from it - clean, as if swept, ribbons on the surface of the soil, and sometimes on the surface of the asphalt. At some distance from the hole, the paths become less clear and then disappear.
The most common, numerous and visible trails are those of mammals. A dense network of paths on the surface of the soil, as well as in its depths, is made by mouse-like rodents, for example, various types of voles, mice, lemmings, etc. In winter, such paths are built by the same rodents on the surface of the soil under the cover of snow, as well as in the snow itself. thicker.
Mole holes, which sometimes densely penetrate the surface layer of the earth, are essentially underground paths that are used by their owner primarily for collecting food - earthworms, insect larvae, etc. In winter, moles also dig holes in the snow. The water rat, or water vole, also moves through burrows that it makes in the soil. These holes serve her to search for food, but unlike the mole, she uses plant food.
Where there are many animals, there are always many paths. The larger the animals that live in a given area, the more noticeable the trails. Most of them are short - 50-100, less often 200 m. Their ends diverge, like the branches of a spreading tree, and disappear.
Typically, trails are formed when animals approach from their overnight or resting places to their feeding areas. During grazing, the animals no longer adhere to a certain direction and the trail disappears. Badgers, marmots, gophers, gerbils and some other animals that dig permanent shelters in the ground - more or less long holes with chambers for various purposes, set out from their holes in search of food along paths that they gradually trample. At some distance from the entrance to the hole, the paths branch, become inconspicuous and then disappear. In addition to these paths, some animals that have shelters in the ground, for example, badgers and raccoon dogs, have paths leading from the hole to the “latrines”, which they systematically visit and where their droppings accumulate.
Many animals, especially vertebrates, are characterized by seasonal migrations. But fish, naturally, do not leave trails during migration, just like birds and whales. Amphibians and reptiles, apparently, do not undertake long seasonal migrations, and those that are characterized by migration (for example, sea turtles) also do not leave trails. Invertebrates, primarily some insects, can make long migrations and can be detected visually in flight. But when they sit down to eat, they leave traces (gnaws, droppings), like, for example, locusts. After migrating butterflies rest, their wings are usually left behind, as many of them are eaten by birds and other animals.
Seasonal migrations of animals usually take place along certain routes, where trails are formed. In Africa, elephant migrations have passed through some of the same places for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years, as can be judged by the depth of the paths and the hardness of the soil in which they are laid. By the way, by laying paths in the forest, elephants facilitate the penetration and movement of many small and large ungulates, which at the same time support and deepen the paths. Elephants play the same role in dense tall grasslands. African ungulates also migrate.
In northern Europe, Asia and America, reindeer are known for their seasonal migrations. Their migration routes are usually the same from year to year. In some places they are wide, in others narrow, but within the more or less wide migration routes there are paths in places where there are fewer obstacles and better soil for walking.
The same can be said about the massive seasonal migrations of saiga antelopes.
In our forests there are long animal trails that have existed and been used for tens and hundreds of years. They lead, for example, to natural salt licks. In dry areas, such trails are laid to convenient watering holes.
Sometimes, following a pass in a mountainous area, a person encounters an animal trail, the direction of which initially generally coincides with the direction he has taken. Walking along an animal trail is much easier than walking on virgin soil, and a person takes it. Then, at some point, the path unexpectedly turns sharply and it may seem to the traveler that it has not gone where he wants, not to the pass. He leaves the path in order to maintain the direction he needs, and usually soon ends up in an impassable thicket, a swamp, or encounters another obstacle. If he has enough prudence and experience, he again goes out onto the animal path and safely reaches the pass. A change in the direction of an animal trail is usually due to the fact that it bypassed some obstacle here.
Once, while conducting research in the extreme southwest of the Primorsky Territory, we needed to move from the Ananyevka river basin to the river basin. Mountain. To do this, it was necessary to cross a watershed with a high rocky ridge. Knowing from local hunters that it is possible to cross the watershed only in one place, we tried for a long time and unsuccessfully to find this place, but constantly came across insurmountable, almost vertical rocks. Only by using the sika deer trail did we manage to find the desired passage.
In autumn, many forest animals, in preparation for winter, try to accumulate more fat. This is especially important for those of them that spend the cold season in hibernation. For example, in the south of the Far East, brown bears feed in the summer on berry fields in the highlands of Sikhote-Alin. Then they descend into cedar and oak forests, where they fatten up for 1.5 - 2 months. Animals walk slowly to feeding areas, using short sections of trails, looking for those areas of the forest that are especially rich in food as they go. Several adult individuals, mothers and cubs can gather here. The distribution of bears among individual areas - the territoriality inherent in bears at other times of the year - is disrupted during this period. The animals do not show aggression towards each other, they establish priority for the right to have the most feeding place, and try to avoid each other while being nearby at the same time.
In deep autumn or early winter, with the onset of cold weather or with the establishment of deep snow cover, the animals unanimously return to the upper zone of the mountains, to the area of selected and pre-prepared dens, within a few days. At this time, bears walk along paths that take the shortest route to the den area. Other animals also move along these paths throughout the year.
Trails are no less important in the life of large predators that do not hibernate during the winter. Thus, according to the observations of one of the authors, D. G. Pikunov, tigers, regardless of age and gender, in 80 - 90% of cases lay their routes along roads or along old animal trails. Only when hunting can they move outside the trails. However, tigers prefer to search for their victims while moving along trails. Sometimes certain sections of the trail are used by only one animal. In particular, this is the case where the predator passes many times to lie down or take cover. Along other paths, stretching, for example, along a long ravine or watershed ridge, a male and a female with tiger cubs walk. A single female walks several kilometers behind them. Sometimes a young male appears on the same path, but he tries to avoid meeting an adult male.
For tigers, which lead a mostly solitary lifestyle, the main purpose of the trails is indirect communication between individuals. They also need trails in order to conveniently approach feeding areas, watering places, resting places, etc. For animals leading a herd lifestyle, the main purpose of trails is to serve as a convenient way to satisfy their vital needs (grazing, watering holes, salt licks, rutting areas).
It is known that many animals, especially in winter, love to walk along roads and paths made by humans. However, these human paths are based on animal paths. They were initially laid by animals in places that were most convenient for movement, rich in food, watering holes, mud baths, well blown by winds, and where there were fewer midges. These places are also convenient for nests, shelters, and dens necessary for breeding offspring. Then a man came to these places, he hunted, fished, and engaged in other crafts. The paths became, as it were, no longer animal, but human. Then the path turned into a road along which you could move on a sleigh or cart.
There are numerous paths that a female boar with piglets makes from the hain to the feeding places, to the stream from which they drink. In the habitats of wild boars there are trees they love, on which they itch. These “combs” can be used by wild boars for many years and change greatly as a result (see Fig. 99). Well-marked paths lead to them.
Sometimes temporary paths are trampled by a bear, which, having killed a large animal or found carrion, walks towards the prey until it eats it all (see Fig. 115).
Seasonal migrations are vital for animals both for food and for breeding. If they are deprived of their ability to migrate, this could lead to their extinction. However, sometimes it happens that people, by constructing roads, oil and gas pipelines, block the migration routes of animals. This, for example, happened during the construction of roads and canals that crossed the migration routes of saigas. The needs of animals were not taken into account during the construction of the BAM. Correcting such mistakes is more difficult than preventing them, but they must be corrected in the name of preserving nature.
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