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Mesoamerican Carnivores
Project Goals: assist in scat detection and collection for species including jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay, and tayra to aid in food web analysis in the Petén Region of Guatemala.
Project Details
Project Location: Maya Biosphere Preserve, Guatemala
Project Partners: The Levi Lab at Oregon State University and Wildlife Conservation Society - Guatemala Program
Project Duration: 7 survey days
Targets Found (approx): 60
Target Species
Jaguar
Panthera onca
Mountain Lion
Puma concolor
Ocelot
Leopardus pardalis
Margay
Leopardus wiedii
Jaguarundi
Puma yagouaroundi
Tayra
Eira barbara
Gray Fox
Urocyon cinereoargenteus
Our dogs found 13x as many scats as human-only teams!
What Our Project Partners Had to Say
"Working with Kayla, Barley, and Niffler to find scats for my Wildlife Ph.D. project in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala truly brought my research to the next level. Enlisting the help of expert dog noses to find cryptic carnivore scats in the hot, humid, and dense understory of my rainforest study system was invaluable. Barley and Kayla were able to find the same number of carnivore scats in just one week that a multi-human search team would take two months to encounter. In addition, the dogs were able to detect the smaller scats of more elusive neotropical carnivores - such as tayra, ocelot, and margay - that human eyes would easily overlook, which allowed me to expand my study and include data from more rare and exciting species."
— Ellen Dymit,
PhD student at Oregon State University
PhD student at Oregon State University
