History Main / ScarilyCompetentTracker

* In the ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' x ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' crossover, ''[[Fanfic/UnwelcomeStormsHunter Hunter]]'', Father Gascoigne chases Taylor this way. No matter how far she runs or how she'd hide, he would find her and kill her, returning her to the dream. Eventually, she got TiredOfRunning and settled the score.

** [[HotScientist Dr. Fraiser]] also pulled this off in "Allegiance" when describing in detail how a Tok'ra was killed from behind and with a blade of exotic design. Teal'c and Bra'tac are visibly impressed.

* Apparently [[spoiler:Raiden]] turned into one in between ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'', [[spoiler:in addition to having [[TookALevelInBadass Taken A Level In Badass]]]]. In the latter, he [[spoiler:coaches Snake about tracking, including telling him to check the depth, shape, and stride of the footprints, check for broken branches, and something about the direction of the wind. You immediately have to use this advice to track down another character, and for the most part, it comes in handy.]]

** Dogs in general. The reason why humans and dogs get along so great is both are persistent hunters, who require this trope to work properly, and both could track in ways the others could not (Humans do have a good sense of smell, but nowhere close to a dog's, which in turn do not have the visual senses a human has, notably lacking tricolor vision).

* ''Series/{{Fargo}}'' has [[KnifeNut Hanzee Dent]], a Native American criminal who works for [[TheFamilyThatSlaysTogether The Gerhardt crime family]]. He is able to easily track down the people who kidnapped [[spoiler:Rye Gerhardt]] and even finds clues at the crime scene that the police themselves missed.

* Subverted in a car commercial where a hiker, hearing a car coming, demonstrates his scary-competency in tracking to his friends by putting his ear to the ground and identifying the approaching vehicle as a high-end sports car. The car that eventually passes by isn't a sports car, of course, but the point of the commercial was supposed to be that you shouldn't be able to tell the difference.

* Most of the characters from ''Manga/DragonBall'' are this given their ability to sense energy. Some like Goku's are so advance that they can find people from across the galaxy. Even before learning to sense energy, Goku [[TheNoseKnows could find and track people by their scent]].

* In ''ComicBook/{{Archie}}'', the titular teenager tries to hide with Jughead from Veronica to duck out of an event, after freaking out that she asked Betty to help find him, quoting that she can zero-in on him from anywhere. They leave Archie's jacket at Pop Tate's, jump to the countryside and wade in the river to cover their tracks, then decide to hide in Veronica's shed. Problem was, not only did Betty know exactly what they were doing earlier, but beat them to Veronica's shed first and just asked her to open it from the inside right before they were about to do so.

* ComicBook/{{Lobo}} has an extremely good sense of smell in an atmosphere, and an additional sense that lets him track bastichs across the galaxy.

* Parodied in ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' comic, where a hunter spots some easy-to-miss signs that show a deer has slept there--completely ignoring the sheets, the pillow, a bedtime book, and a picture of a deer that's there also.

'''Napoleon:''' Why they're bla-- now how would I know that?

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Rango}}'', [[TheQuietOne Rango's deputy Wounded Bird]] can ''[[TheNoseKnows smell]]'' blindess. Or an enlarged prostate.

* ''Film/FairGame'': EvilPoacher Sunny. He is able to unerringly track Jessica across terrain that consists mostly of bare rock. At one point, he kneels, touches his finger to the ground and tastes ''something''. Whatever it is seems to confirm to him that he is on the right trail. Later, he spends a few seconds studying the approach to the farm and is able to correctly deduce that is trapped and decides to find another way in.

* In ''Film/{{The Incredible Hulk|2008}}'' (the Creator/EdwardNorton version), General Ross is able to track down Banner to South America, and the only clue that Ross had was elderly gentleman that was sick from gamma radiation poisoning. With that, Ross was able to trace the drink back to Brazil to its processing plant.

** Aragorn is only able to deduce fairly basic information from the signs and in the book, he outright admits that a lot of what he sees doesn't make sense unless he acknowledges that a few pertinent facts will have taken place elsewhere, or will otherwise have left no visible signs. Nevertheless, he does have impressive tracking skills, which is justified by having been raised and lived as a Ranger of the wilds of Eriador. He does mention having limits, being unwilling to continue the chase across the plains of Rohan at night, as the trail is harder to see compared to when they were in the forest and the risk of losing it in the dark is too great. Also, the only reason he finds Pippin's lorien leaf clasp in the book is because Pippin ran from the Orcs to drop it away from them, so the clasp wouldn't be trampled and hidden. In the movie, Aragorn finds the clasp after it's been trampled and buried in the ground. At another point, he's completely baffled by what he sees, because he's never encountered Ent-tracks before.

** For that matter, Gollum himself; following tracks and rumours allowed him to trace a lot of Bilbo's journey despite not starting to look until a year after it happened. He was able to pick up the trail of the Fellowship while they were all stuck in Moria, and maintained a pursuit of them all the way out of it despite their taking refuge for a while in Lorien, and then going by river. Even Aragorn admitted that he couldn't figure out a way to shake Gollum's pursuit once he was firmly on their trail. He even managed to track down Sam and Frodo again in the middle of Mordor. Part of this is implied to be a preternatural sense for the Ring, although Gandalf also once stated that long exposure to the Ring sharpened his senses in a way that made him good at things such as sneaking and following and finding secrets.
* ''Film/{{Maverick}}'': Maverick demonstrates this ability when he tracks the fake Indians and recognizes from near invisible tracks (the tracks were in the dusty layer covering a rocky path) that the horses are shod. He also parodies the "listen to the ground" approach, to get Miss Bransford to do the same. He can't actually do that.

* Prince Humperdinck does it on the location of the duel between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black in ''Film/ThePrincessBride'' (in the book, it is said that he can track a falcon on a ''cloudy day''), noting that both men were expert swordsmen based solely on their footwork. He does it again on the location of the fight between the Man in Black and Fezzik. And then again at the Battle of Wits site, where he is able to identify the colorless, odorless poison as iocaine powder by ''smell'', though this one was intended as a bit of a joke for observant audience members (though finding a man who'd been killed by ingesting poison and figuring out that it must be a colorless and oderless toxin based on the goblet lacking any discoloration or scent does make sense).

* Parodied in the corny-but-endearing movie ''Film/RoadToRedemption'' (produced by Billy Graham's Christian-outreach organization, so you can probably guess the production values and [[EasyEvangelism the overall plot trajectory]]). After the protagonists' car has an unfortunate encounter with a train, Creator/WesStudi's character gives the bad guys following them a description of the vehicle they took ''away'' from the accident, and the person who gave them a lift. He then admits that he got that information not from examining the scene, but from [[BoringButPractical finding witnesses to the crash]] and questioning them.

** Multiple times, in fact. All played for laughs, of course. The first time, he stops, picks up something from the ground, and chews it thoughtfully. A few moments pass in silence, and it looks like he's about to rattle off a detailed description and play this trope straight. When asked what's going on by his more mission-focused partner, he deems the object he's chewing cinnamon, and when yelled at, notes that the heroes have been through the area, because all of the broken branches and twigs.

'''Oh:''' Yeah and did they eat some shit too? Cuz there's a lot of shit in that shit.\\

* In another joke, a group of hunters come across tracks in the woods. They argue about the details of the animal that left them until one mans leans down and claims he's determined the animal's age and zodiac sign. When the others join him, [[spoiler:they're all hit by the train]].

** The paragraph before, though, Muldoon subverts this. He remarks that it’s usually very difficult to track anything after an animal attack, and while most people assume the aftermath of such encounters are filled with blood and gore, the truth is that there’s usually nothing, since a predator can easily kill a child just by shaking them to snap their neck, making it look to the detectives as though the child just walked out.

** also the originator of the ear-to-the-ground trick. Most copycats however forget that this works for Aragorn, because there are a LOT of orcs who are not bothering to be quiet and moving quite quickly. Also, he never actually finds the orcs who took Merry and Pippin. The Rohirrim apprehend him, Legolas and Gimli first. It's actually an open question whether Aragorn truly heard the footsteps of the orcs, or the Rohirrim's horses (and the latter would actually make significantly more sense). Aragorn doesn't have any supernatural tracking ability, he's just a very very experienced woodsman.

* In ''Literature/MartinFierro'': At Song III of the First Book, Martin Fierro describes the Indians as this. At the Song X of the Second Book, Fierro describes how he and a captive woman flee an Indian town and cross ThePampas until they reach the Frontier. They were terrified of this trope because Fierro had killed one indian and they were after them.

* In ''Literature/TheWitchlands'', Aeduan can smell blood (or some magical version thereof) across vast distances if he has something that belong to his target. With this, he can even track people ''across the sea''.
* Vampires and werewolves both in ''Literature/WomenOfTheOtherworld''. Vampires have some sort of weird instinct that lets them always accurately guess which direction someone has gone or if somebody is near by. Werewolves have heightened senses of hearing and smell, and since they also possess human minds, they're basically tracking dogs that can make well thought out decisions and predict where a target they lost the scent of has gone based on human behavior.

* The Huntsman ([[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep natch!]]) does this in ''Series/TheTenthKingdom'': after emerging from the Dwarf mines, he puts his ear to a boulder and is able to hear through the rock (complete with cool shrieking hawk sound-effects) all the way to the Royal Estate where Virginia and Tony are walking. Either something they say is indicative of their location, or he can tell how far the sound traveled, because he's able to know exactly where they are.

** Connor, most of it learned during his [[DeathWorld Quartoth]] childhood and made possible by his Dhamypr like enhanced senses. He once said he could track anything anywhere.

* One episode of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' had an Apache tracker come in to consult on a case that had Native American themes. The man was able to deduce an insane amount of detail, including seeing from Hotch's footprints that he wore a gun on one ankle, because his footsteps were slightly deeper on that side.
* Benton Fraser in ''Series/DueSouth'', taking the stereotype of all Mounties well past the point of parody. This usually involves whatever the best gross out is, such as [[FingertipDrugAnalysis licking something horrible]] and [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer diving into the sewers]].

** The series took a different spin on this, but nonetheless subverted it all to hell. House's team is attempting to figure something about their delusional homeless patient's identity and their only clue is a sheaf of artwork she had drawn. House is able to take one look and interpret each of the details in one drawing to mean that the patient was in a car accident in Philadelphia on Oct. 22, 2002. The team's shock at discovering that House is a ScarilyCompetentTracker quickly turns to chagrin, though, when House finally concludes that the patient had broke her arm and the doctors had "fixed it -- with '''this!'''" He holds up a surgical pin, the serial number on which he was able to use to track down their patient's name and medical history.

* ''Series/ThePretender'': Jarod has a couple of episodes where he displays expertise in tracking people. In one he finds a child and in another episode about a military cover up he manages to find an elite team of soldiers who are supposed to be covering their tracks.

* Creator/ChuckNorris does this in ''Series/WalkerTexasRanger''. He is traveling through the forest, gets on the ground, sniffs some dirt, takes a lick, and then states in a matter of fact voice that, "A plane crashed here."

* A D&D spell, [[https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/discern-location/ Discern Location]], allows you to become one - nothing short of full out DivineIntervention or an equally powerful nondetection spell, Mind Blank, can prevent you from determining your quarry's current plane of existence, continent, country, state, city, and ''street adress''.

* Arthur Morgan of ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' has access to an eagle eye-like ability, presumably a representation of natural keen observation skills. Charles Smith, a fellow member of the Van Der Linde gang of mixed black and Native American descent, gives him a quick rundown of how to track and hunt animals in the prologue (teaching the player how to use the ability), and is implied to be much more skilled at both. Interestingly, if the player activates the ability while in the gang's camp, the trails of individual gang members become visible and identifiable by name, implying that Arthur (like real life examples listed below) can recognize his fellow gang members by footprints alone.

* Dhur from ''Webcomic/MeatShield'' can [[http://www.meatshield.net/archive/451-the-dirt-whisperer/ read dirt]] He can tell a targets hair colour and dominant hand from their tracks but get lost if he tries to use a map.

* ''Literature/CanYouSpareAQuarter'': Pony manages to find Jamie by following footsteps in the snow, broken twigs and can even diagnose his injuries on the basis of the traces of blood. He recommends to Jason that careful observation is more effective than merely running after someone.

* ''LetsPlay/{{Dream}}'': In any challenge where someone is hunting someone else, the Hunter(s) always have a compass that points towards their target, meaning they can always find him no matter where he goes or how he tries to hide. The exception was that they couldn't track locations within the Nether, until a Minecraft update changed that. The compass plays a big role in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgdSJdeGF_0 "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE."]] [[spoiler:Dream builds a fake Nether Portal so that he could trick the hunters into thinking he was back at the Nether. It would've worked, but the compass gave it away, since it can indirectly tell whether Dream's at the Overworld or the Nether depending on if it moves or not, since this video was before the update that made compasses work in the Nether.]]

* [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the ''WesternAnimation/AceVentura'' animated series: Ace finds a footprint and gives a detailed description of the owner's age, size, health, and appearance. Turns out the guy dropped a drivers' license next to the footprint.

** Sokka does this in the season 1 episode "Bato of the Water Tribe". He spots some scuffmarks in the dirt and some broken branches and one water tribe artifact. He's able to determine what happened and make an entertaining story out of it until they get to the beach. He also knows you can amplify vibrations by putting your ear up to a knife stuck in a tree.

* Principal Skinner displayed this ability in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much". [[NonGivingUpSchoolGuy He even tracks Bart across a river.]] [[{{Determinator}} By walking]] [[ImplacableMan straight]] [[RuleOfFunny through it.]] Also, Homer is capable of [[TheNoseKnows reading messages on cake by smell alone]] and, according to Bart, can hear pudding. Bart himself does it in the episode "Days of Wine and D'ohses"; he can tell a person's country of origin by smelling their cut off hair.

--->...both men and women are able to identify an individual person merely by the sight of his or her footprint in the sand. There is nothing mysterious about this. Their tracking is a skill, cultivated over a lifetime, that builds on literally tens of thousands of observations (see also Liebenberg, 1990).The Ju hunter can deduce many kinds of information about the animal he is tracking: its species and sex, its age, how fast it is travelling, whether it is alone or with other animals, its physical condition (healthy or ill), whether and on what it is feeding, and the time of day the animal passed this way.

* More generally, human beings. Our large brains are very good at taking in details, and in turn tracking. Couple this with our impressive endurance, and we can literally [[{{Determinator}} chase things to death.]]

* While we can talk a lot about specific humans, the real scarily competent trackers are Bloodhounds. All they need is a little of your scent and then it becomes basically impossible to get away from them. The Series/{{Mythbusters}} even busted a myth that's it's possible to baffle one even through ridiculous circumstances.

** Dogs in general. The reason why humans and dogs get along so great is both are persistence hunters, who require this trope to work properly, and both could track in ways the others could not (Humans do have a good sense of smell, but nowhere close to a dog's, which in turn do not have the visual senses a human has, notably lacking tricolor vision).

** The most famous instance being Creator/ShiaLaBeouf's ''Series/HeWillNotDivideUs'' livestream, in which he raised a flag in protest leading to the most elaborate game of "Capture the Flag" known to man. At one point he attempted to hide it by filming the flag from below with nothing but the sky in view, but 4chan trolls managed to locate the flag in under two days by using astronomy, time zones, and detective work with airline flight paths. When he moved it to a deserted cabin, [[UpToEleven they found it by examining the wood pattern on the walls]]. The final location was in front of a blank white wall, which they tracked down to a house in London within four hours by examining how a light from off-screen shifted and eventually dimmed.

* ''Series/MotherlandFortSalem'': The Marshal, a tracker who has been reputed to be the best there is. He manages to see through Scylla and Nicte's disguises, revealing them with a whistle. They manage to flee, but he still finds them, and [[WorthyOpponent exresses admiration]] that they even temporarily had escaped him.

* [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Daryl]] of ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' is capable of this AND SherlockScan.

* Jasmine from the ''Literature/DeltoraQuest'' is an amazing tracker due to having grown up in TheLostWoods, and can also talk to trees. Her [[AnimatedAdaptation anime]] version is even more adept to tracking than her book counterpart due to fillers in the show.

** In the novel ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', Angua the werewolf is, in fact, able to tell what color coat a tracked person was wearing, by the distinctive smell of the dye.
** Vimes parodies this in the same book; he picks up a clove and (having met the man who chewed them), describes him in perfect detail to the others' amazement.
--->'''Vimes:''' The trick is to know the correct answer beforehand.
** Gaspode might also qualify in ''The Fifth Elephant'', although admittedly, he ''is'' a dog. Dog or not, his highly detailed description of Ginger (as discerned by smell alone) from ''Literature/MovingPictures'' is surely a parody of this trope.

* In ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'' (the Creator/EdwardNorton version), General Ross is able to track down Banner to South America, and the only clue that Ross had was elderly gentleman that was sick from gamma radiation poisoning. With that, Ross was able to trace the drink back to Brazil to its processing plant.

* Tracker Smurf, a Season 2 character in ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'', is one of these.** * ''WesternAnimation/{{Superfriends}}'': In the episodes "Revenge on Gorilla City", "The Time Trap", and "The Village of Lost Souls", it is shown that Apache Chief has exceptional tracking ability.

** He also explains using other environment clues such as the behavior of the local wildlife in reaction to people walking through. In one episode he notices a pack of wild horses NOT walking his way to investigate him and his horse, thus deduces that something ''else'' must be holding their attention. He quickly finds his prey surrounded by the horses.

** The most famous instance being Creator/ShiaLaBeouf's ''Series/HeWillNotDivideUs'' livestream, in which he raised a flag in protest leading to the most elaborate game of "Capture the Flag" known to man. At one point he attempted to hide it by filming the flag from below with nothing but the sky in view, but 4chan trolls managed to locate the flag in under two days by using astronomy, time zones, and detective work with airline flight paths. When he moved it to a deserted cabin, [[UpToEleven they found it by examining the wood pattern on the walls]]. The final location was in front of a blank white wall, which they tracked down to a house in London.

* Moon, the [[MixedAncestry half-breed]] ArmyScout, is shown to be this throughout ''Film/TheShadowOfChikara'', so when he cannot find ''any'' sign of the hunters who are pursuing them through the wilderness, it seriously freaks him out.

* ''Film/MurderInCowetaCounty:''
** Sheriff Potts once tracked a murderer from Georgia to Kansas.
** Sheriff Potts' subordinate, Elzie Hancock finds signs of where Turner's body was disposed of (including the width of some drag marks and a loose piece of fiber) when no one else can.
--> ''After his years of experience, Hancock could follow a trail and tell how old the tracks were, approximately what time of the day or night they had been made, and why the person who made them had gone into the woods.''

There are two ways the Scarily Competent Tracker works his magic. The first is to crouch and prod the footprints with his fingers. The other is to stick his ear to the ground and listen. Or possibly TheNoseKnows, but that usually goes into SuperSenses.

Compare TheyHaveTheScent, with which this trope can overlap. If the Tracker is non-sapient, then you may have a SuperPersistentPredator on your hands. Good luck with that. If the Tracker is part of a FiveManBand, then they typically fill the role of TheSmartGuy.

Compare TheyHaveTheScent, with which this trope can overlap. If the Tracker is non-sapient, then you may have a SuperPersistentPredator on your hands. Good luck with that.

** On another occasion, 4chan users managed to pin down the coordinates of a terrorist training camp in southern Aleppo, UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} [[https://imgur.com/N7DwWP1?r and coordinated with a Russian journalist to successfully arrange an airstrike on the location]] using a combination of Google Maps and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard footage from one of their own recruitment videos]].

** On another occasion, 4chan users managed to pin down the coordinates of a terrorist training camp in southern Aleppo, UsefulNotes/Syria [[https://imgur.com/N7DwWP1?r and coordinated with a Russian journalist to successfully arrange an airstrike on the location]] using a combination of Google Maps and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard footage from one of their own recruitment videos]].

* In ''ComicBook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}}'', this is Dawnstar's superpower. she is a master tracker and can track life forms and objects across light years of distance and through interstellar space. She can even use this ability while unconscious, asleep, under mind control, intoxicated or sensory blinded.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': Aragorn, being a ranger, is this during the pursuit of the orcs in ''The Two Towers.'' And earlier, though "off-screen", he and Gandalf somehow manage to track Gollum from the Misty Mountains all the way to Mordor, ''years'' after Gollum had made that journey!

* ''Literature/ChroniclesOfAncientDarkness'': Torak's father taught him tracking so well that he's the best tracker of the Forest. Fin-Kedinn states that Torak inherited this gift from his mother and his father taught him to use it so that he'd be attentive of the surrounding Forest and wouldn't make the same mistakes he did in not listening to others.

* ''Literature/DresdenFiles'': Harry Dresden is in the Yellow Pages as a detective/wizard. Despite admitting to generally struggling with subtler magic, his job as a PI has lead to developing remarkable skill as a tracker and detective, using both magical and mundane means, to the point that his testimony is considered for a crime that happened on the other side of the world from him. He eventually builds a voodoo doll of ''Chicago'' in order to track people with as little as a speck of paint from their car.
* In his nonfiction book ''Literature/{{Facundo}}'', Domingo Sarmiento claims 1800s Argentina has a lot of them, called Rastreadors, who are so good they can identify who's horse made what tracks and that one was able to track someone down eighteen months after he'd last seen their preserved footprint.

* We don't actually know how he did it, but in ''Literature/HarryPotter'', Rubeus Hagrid tracked Harry and the Dursleys around Surrey and at least another county before getting tired of waiting and showing up. Note that ''he didn't even know what Harry looked like''.

* In ''Literature/LabyrinthsOfEcho'', a Master of Pursuit is someone who can magically follow a person's footsteps with their own feet (normally barefoot). Usually the Master has to run all the way until they bump into the person they're trailing; the more focused they become on the trail, the more oblivious they are to anything else - which means they're vulnerable to attacks and should never work alone. A common side effect from a gifted Master of Pursuit being on your trail includes mood shifts: Lady Melamori Blimm gives her victims terrible weakness and depression, while another (posthumous) character was able to fine-tune his target's sensations in line with the seriousness of their crime.

* ''ComicBook/{{WITCH}}'' has Lord Cedric: if he's after you, he ''will'' find you. It went to the point that Elias Van Dahl used ''time travel'' to escape him, going from Meridian at the end of the twentieth century to Earth in the seventeenth century... And then one day ''Cedric barged in with his men''. It's implied he had actually been there for a while and had just waited for the eve of his wedding out of sheer sadism.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman2011'': Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, proves that she earns that title when she tracks down Dio by sent and other things no one else can sense from at least a hundred miles away.

* Parodied in ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' comic, where a hunter spots some easy-to-miss signs that show a deer has slept there - completely ignoring the sheets, the pillow, a bedtime book, and a picture of a deer that's there also.

* Parodied in a vignette from the Italian cartoonist Altan, featuring a Native American lying on the ground as if to listen and saying "They're in 50, all on horseback." When asked how did he knows that, [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction he claims that they run over him, ten minutes ago.]]

* SelfDemonstrating/{{Lobo}} has an extremely good sense of smell in an atmosphere, and an additional sense that lets him track bastichs across the galaxy.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Corbett_(hunter) Jim Corbett]] was a [[GreatWhiteHunter hunter]] famous for killing man-eating tigers and leopards that terrorized villages, some of them with victims numbering in the hundreds. He could [[SherlockScan tell how old tracks were, as well as the sex, size, and condition of the animal]] that made them. He could even [{AwesomenessByAnalysis identify individual tigers he had observed before]].

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Corbett_(hunter) Jim Corbett]] was a [[GreatWhiteHunter hunter]] famous for killing man-eating tigers and leopards that terrorized villages, some of them with victims numbering in the hundreds. He could tell how old tracks were, as well as the sex, size, and condition of the animal that made them. He could even identify individual tigers he had observed before.