Spoor (animal)

Spoor is a trace or a set of footprints by which the progress of someone or something may be followed. Spoor may include tracks, scents, or broken foliage. Spoor is useful for discovering or surveying what types of animals live in an area, or in animal tracking.
The word was borrowed into English, from Afrikaansspoor, from, which is cognate with,, and modern English spurn. It is cognate also with spur, the metaltool on the heels of.
By analogy, in politics, "to look carefully on the spoor in the trails" means to investigate what is actually going on in a sensitive situation.