Mysterious tracks cover Yellowstone National Park. Can you guess what left them behind?
Ready for a fun wildlife quiz? Yellowstone National Park has you covered — in snowy wildlife tracks.
Park officials shared photos of a variety of different tracks left in the snow, and some of them are pretty tricky to identify. One set wasn’t even left by wildlife but instead by cross-country skiers.
“The wonderful thing about snow is that it holds stories! One of the stories it tells is in the form of animal tracks,” officials wrote in a post shared Feb. 16 on Facebook. “Can you identify who’s been here from the tracks they’ve left behind?”
Commenters were able to identify the animal in the first photo as a wolf pretty easily. Some shared their own photos of wolf tracks they’ve come across in the snow.
The next photo is less clear. It doesn’t show footprints like the wolf track photo. Instead it shows wide lines in the snow leading right into a river.
Officials explained the tracks were left by a river otter that likely slid right down into the water.
“Otters doing the belly slides!!” someone commented.
Next up is the snowshoe hare. The tracks are so clear, the viewer is able to see the hare’s peculiar footfalls, with their long back feet launching them forward in front of their smaller front feet.
Some in the comments mistook bison tracks for an elk herd. The photo shows a snowy landscape mottled with marks from cloven hooves.
Next up is grizzly bear tracks, which caused commenters to ponder why the bear that left the tracks wasn’t hibernating. Someone else joked the tracks would cause people to run around looking for Bigfoot.
The last photo in the post may be the most mysterious. The tracks look just like a swerving dashed line in the snow heading into a tree line.
“This one stumped me,” someone wrote.
Another replied: “I was thinking, ‘something long and skinny’.”
Another guess: “Snake with the case of hiccups.”
One person was close when they guessed an ermine had left the tracks.
Can you guess which creature made the tracks? We’ll give you a hint: These small predators have a reputation for being sneaky and mischievous. You might say they weaseled their way through the snow into the cover of the forest.
This story was originally published February 17, 2023 at 2:47 PM with the headline "Mysterious tracks cover Yellowstone National Park. Can you guess what left them behind?."
