Poop is gold
Why teach dogs to find droppings?
"Wild animal droppings are as valuable as gold to us," says Hwang. Droppings divulge more information about animals than other traces-claw marks, paw prints, bite marks, and such-and are an animal byproduct that is easy to gather in the wild.
First, the food remnants within droppings reveal which foods a bear has ingested. Besides Japanese blue oak (Cyclobalanopsis) acorns and muntjac hair, the seeds of Chinese hickory (Carya cathayensis), Machilus and indigenous cinnamon (Cinnamomum osmophloeum) have been found, showing that the bears spread seeds for these plants. DNA analysis of intestinal epithelial cells in droppings can identify individual bears; hormones can show whether the bear is in heat or pregnant; thyroid hormone can reflect the animal's nutritional status; the presence of parasites (such as roundworms or tapeworms) within droppings are important clues to bear diseases; and the places where the droppings are found provide information on game trails, activity ranges and habitats.
The uses of droppings are broad. The problem is that black bears don't stay put, and excrement decomposes quickly in the rain and moisture of the mountains. It's not easy to find a fresh piece of poop. On this excursion, Hwang Mei-hsiu and Lin Kuan-fu, both old hands in foraying, locate an average of five or six piles of feces of varying ages each day, not a bad result given the restrictions that terrain, vegetation density and weather place on two-legged humans. Sniffer dogs, on the other hand, are not limited in these ways: they can go anywhere a black bear can go.
On the second morning at Dafen, Hwang discovered a complete lump of brown scat while doing a line-transect survey in the Japanese blue oak forest. "This is about one or two months old!" said Hwang after visual inspection. She then told Kevin to bring Weily over to sniff it out. The odor was weak with age, and Weily, hunting to and fro nearby, didn't come near the droppings. Seeing this, Kevin placed the ball by the droppings and called Weily. Weily reluctantly yielded and finally sat down by the dung. "Good boy!" said Kevin, immediately squatting down, stroking his head and praising him; he then threw the ball, which unfortunately rolled down a 70-degree slope of dense forest. Weily chased the ball downward, and disappeared after several seconds. Kevin grudgingly chased after him. "All Weily sees is the ball, not the terrain," Hwang sighs.
Sniffer dogs are a field research tool requiring long-term investment, especially well suited for studying rare and elusive species, such as Formosan black bears.