One of the animals not yet documented in Sugarloaf Ridge St Pk is a ringtail. Since most of the posting on iNat of ringtalils are either scat or flatterned individuals, would you have any comments on how to differentiate ringtail from racoon scat , esp since they are related and have similar food preferences/.
Scat can tell us a lot about an animal's diet, habits and movement, so scientists like to study it both in nature and in the lab. Outdoors, scat can identify what animals are present in an area.
The Conservation Scats Project, conducted by a team at the University of California, Santa Cruz presented a rare opportunity to identify scats by DNA analysis. See the following link for more information about the project:
http://www.conservationscats.com/
Over 300 scat samples were collected and analyzed for DNA content of both predator and prey. I created the following project on iNaturalist for the samples I collected and had photos for:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/conservation-scats-rancho-san-antonio-osp
Results of the study were published in Oikos - Synthesizing Ecology in January 2018:
