What types of traces are left behind?

Living things leave traces. The world is full of them: footprints in the snow, gnawed pine cones, bones as the remains of deceased vertebrates, birds' nests or even foul odors bear witness to the presence of other creatures. In extreme cases, there are many millions of years between the formation of tracks and their discovery, as demonstrated by the dinosaur tracks on Piz Ela.

Reading tracks requires knowledge and experience. The context and surroundings of the tracks must also be taken into account. Experienced track readers learn a lot about their environment. Ever since humans have existed, they have had to read tracks: This is how they find food; this is how they can avoid being the next meal for others. Reading tracks means encountering our fellow creatures. And these encounters leave traces in us.

The temporary exhibition created by the Solothurn Nature Museum comprises five themes, namely "feeding tracks, footprints, buildings, legacies and invisible tracks". The individual thematic areas are equipped with many objects and interactive stations. The variety of objects, be they footprints, nuts, feathers or eggs, makes it easy to compare them with one another.

The exhibition is accompanied by the project "Nut hunt - join in the search for dormice" (link: nussjagd.naturmuseum-winterthur.ch). Together with Livia Haag, wildlife biologist and project manager, the Naturmuseum Winterthur is searching for traces of dormice feeding.

Do you enjoy taking a leisurely stroll along woodland edges and hedgerows with plenty of bushes? Or have you always wanted to know who lives in the hazel bush at the edge of the forest? Search for nibbled nuts and bring all suspected nuts that look like hazel dormouse nibbles to the Winterthur Nature Museum!


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.