Identifying animal droppings
Identifying the droppings in your attic, basement, or wherever they may be is one of the most important parts of our job. Animals don’t always show themselves when we want them to, in fact they usually don’t. In order to successfully identify what animal we are dealing with, we often need to use clues left behind to know what we are dealing with.
One such form is droppings. All animals have to defecate, some more than others, and that can be a huge help to us. It can also be a messy cleanup, and knowing what you are dealing with allows us to do it safely.
Photos showing examples of different wildlife droppings in a grid format.
Sometimes small droppings can be a little bit difficult to identify. Mice, bats, gray, red, and flying squirrels, and rats all have very similar droppings to the untrained eye.
Often times the way they are arranged can be a defining factor. Clusters of lots droppings is typically indicative of bats, mice, or flying squirrels. Gray squirrels and rats, on the other hand, typically leave them more spread out.
Any droppings over about 3/4 of an inch means something larger than a small animal; i.e something larger than a squirrel. We often get calls for “noise in the attic” which can be almost any of these animals.
Being able to use the clues provided is how we narrow down and target what our animal is, including when the noises occur, what kind of noises are heard, and what the location looks like. Identifying the droppings are the #1 visual cue to help us figure out what animal we are dealing with.