10 MISC. PUBLICATION 86, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
B. Behavior—Continued. 
food supply, climatic, physiological; unusual migratory movements, 
as the spasmodic irruptions of lemmings, and mouse plagues, with 
causes. 
(11) Adaptations and maladaptations—intelligence ; overdevelopment and 
underdevelopment of instinct; beneficial and harmful instincts; co- 
operation; movements and attitudes, freezing, slinking, running, 
crouching, hiding, trailing; shelter ways or avenues of retreat; con- 
spicuous adaptation or lack thereof to new conditions; habits for- 
merly beneficial, now harmful. 
(12) Miscellaneous peculiarities of habit—carrying propensities, as of 
wood rat; scratching and rolling habits, as of wolf, coyote, and 
mountain lion; other peculiarities. 
LOWER MAMMALS AND MAN 
A. Finding and counting mammals. 
(1) Means of detecting presence of particular species—form of tracks, 
distances between footfalls, differences in tracks with various 
speeds or movements, tracks in mud, dust, sand, snow; feces 
(scatology), shape, size, color, composition, place of deposit. abun- 
dance; claw marks on trees, logs, or ground; tooth marks on wood 
or bone; wallows, dust baths, beds, forms, nests, shelters, runways, 
holes, trails, yards, “ using” places; cropped or harvested vegeta- 
tion. 
(2) Numbers—present and former numbers; methods of taking censuses ; 
counts on transects or unit areas; trap-night, live-trap, standard- 
bait, and poisoning methods of making counts; judging numbers 
from records of individuals seen, or from enumeration of tracks, 
feces per unit area, burrows, mounds, dens, nests, vegetation or 
other materials consumed, or other evidences of presence; fluctua- 
tions in numbers from year to year and causes of fluctuations; 
pathogenic agencies; adverse or favoring conditions, drought or 
flood; effects of disease and other natural checks; manner and 
rate of increase in numbers. 
B. Direct relations between mammals and man. 
(1) Effects on mammals of man’s activities—increase or decrease in 
numbers due to man’s occupation and invasion of new ranges, 
with changes in habits, involving changed relations to human 
welfare; effects on numbers, habits, and distribution of mammals 
of agriculture, railroad and bridge building and maintenance, fenc- 
ing, hunting, grazing, lumbering, plowing and irrigating, forest 
fires, protection of certain species of game or Other classes, killing 
pest species, as predatory carnivores and rodents; effects of 
captivity. 
(2) Utilization of game and fur species—present and former numbers; 
methods of conservation and management; manner of handling 
local legislation; hunting and trapping methods. 
(3) Undeveloped mammalian resources—fiesh for food; fur or hides for 
clothing; other useful mammalian products; possibilities and dif- 
ficulties of domestication or semidomestication or use of additional 
beneficial wild species. 
(4) The mammal pest problem—mammals harmful to various interests ; 
balance between harm done and possible benefits rendered by 
alleged pests (value as objects of sport, producers of fur, as 
sources of flesh for food, or as enemies of other species); details 
of economic relations, including lists of crops or products attacked, 
beneficial species preyed on, or of native vegetation or trees dam- 
aged; definite data on extent of damage done; economic relations 
in different seasons; when and where are control methods justi- 
fied; degree of control necessary on particular areas; methods of 
control, with details on trapping, poisoning, or hunting methods: 
relation of mammals to public health, with data on parasites or 
disease germs carried by them and other susceptible animals (e. g., 
relation of rats and ground squirrels to bubonic plague; of rodents 
to Rocky Mountain spotted fever; of coyotes and other mammals 
to rabies; of rabbits, coyotes, and others to tularemia). 
