Discover: Mystery Footprints

You have already made many observations in this unit. You know that observations are made by seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, and sometimes even tasting.  They are facts that you obtain using your five senses.  Making observations is a skill used in all areas of science, but it is especially important during an investigation.

After you make your observations, you can start to think of inferences: the guess or conclusion you can make based on the evidence.  Sometimes you have no way to know for sure if an inference is correct, but a good inference is always supported by observations and evidence.

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(Answers will vary depending on locations used for sampling.)

Observations	Inference
There are two sets of prints (black and grey) Prints look like a predator (lion, wolf, tiger, etc.) and a bird Prints are moving towards each other	Predator is hunting the bird
The prints are all mixed up together	The predator is attacking the bird
Grey (bird) tracks are gone Black (predator) tracks are moving away Only one set of tracks remain	The predator ate the bird. The predator is still walking; the grey bird flew away.