FOLLOWING THE TRAIL CLUES
Sometimes as a detective you have to track a suspect down. Footprints leading away from the picnic table could be a clue to finding the person who took the cupcake off the dessert platter, (not to mention the crumbs dropped along the way).
Based on size, were the footprints made by a man or woman? By an adult or child?
What kind of shoes was the person wearing? Boots? Running shoes? High heels? Or was he or she barefoot?
Can you tell if the person was tiptoeing or walking flat-footed?
Are the footprints deep or shallow? That might give you some idea of the person’s weight.
How far apart are the steps? The farther apart, the taller the person is. (A person’s step length is about 43% of his or her height.) So as a rough guide:
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Note: The adult or a friend might make footprints for the child to analyze and try to guess who made them.
Animals
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and birds
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leave their own distinctive tracks for you to follow in snow, sand, or mud.
The Winnie-the-Pooh story, “In which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a Woozle,” is about the two chums following their own tracks around and around a tree!
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E. H. Shepard illustration
The story is in this Pooh book:
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If you live on a farm, or somewhere with a garden, or close to a park or beach, or where there is snow, why don’t you try to find some tracks that you can follow and see where they lead. Here’s a printable chart that might help identify some of them, (although I’d recommend avoiding the dinosaur!).
And here are a few videos about animal tracking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz02S-CizAU (4:52) “Animal Track Detective” – from Science for Kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUofNb2ZS0k (1:01) Following tracks of small animal in the snow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVzY7DDECD0 (9:48) Professional tracker describing identifying tracks (for older children)
You could also make a track trap:
Take a shallow, fairly large box, line the bottom with dampened dirt or sand, and put it outside with an end against a wall. Put some bread or a little bit of cheese in the box, positioned so a bird or small animal would have to step in the box to reach it.
Alternatively, if you have access to a garden, you could create an area with bare, damp dirt, and again place a bit of food in it, forcing the animal or bird to step in the dirt to reach it.
After a few hours, or overnight, is the food gone? Are there tracks there? Can you identify what creature the tracks belong to?
Animals are able to track by smell. Bloodhounds can pick up a scent trail and follow it for more than 130 miles, even if it is as much as 300 hours old! Their long ears sweep the ground and brush scents up to their noses. Police rely on them to help find missing persons.
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Here is a video about the amazing bloodhounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AG59PncXxs (5:00)
Can you follow a scent with your nose? Have a friend or an adult put on some perfume, or hold something with a strong scent (onion, maybe?), and you take a good whiff of it. Then have that person walk away from you, and see if you can still smell the scent in the air behind them.
You could also have the friend or adult hide something smelly in a kitchen cupboard. Can you find it, just using your nose?
