Noninvasive Sampling: Monitoring of Wild Carnivores and Their Parasites

Abstract

This chapter aims to present the importance, advantages, and disadvantages as well as the different types of noninvasive samples that can be used to monitor the carnivorous fauna and the parasitic agents that can infect these animals. This issue is extremely relevant, since noninvasive sampling has been increasingly used in different scientific researches that study animals with elusive habits, such as carnivores, and that claim animal welfare, once these animals do not need to be observed or captured. It is still important to highlight the scarcity of studies on parasitic diseases in free-living carnivores, being needed that parasitological surveys be done frequently by the conservation unit managers also to monitor the infectious agents that may be being introduced into the ecosystem of carnivores due to anthropization.