Difficult question.. identifying signs is always a tricky issue especially when the substrate is not what you like. There are a lot of sign attributes of a particular species which you can find in many documents in the web. But I think what you can actually get is the best guess unless and until you find other related signs too. Please find a flyer that shows some tracks with their measurements for comparison but beware this might vary even at sub species level..

I have been in a situation while doing a clouded leopard survey when we found a scat that didn't look like it was either of a leopard cat or leopard. We guessed it was of a clouded leopard and we did camera trap clouded leopard in that exact location. So it also depends upon your experience too.

Thank you Yadav Dai

Thank you Bart.

I believe that thin layer chromatography of bile acids from faeces may be a useful approach. However I tried this when I was a PhD student back in 1982 and found it technically challenging. However the methodology given in the paper identified below may be more user friendly. (I have not tried it.)

Improved Bile-Acid Thin-Layer Chromatography to Identify Feces of Neotropical Carnivores

Angel F. Capurro, Andrés J. Novaro, Alejandro Travaini and Marta S. Romero

The Journal of Wildlife Management

Vol. 61, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), pp. 1424-1427

Dear Jeevan,

Just a few more things to add to what people have already said:

- First of all, canid tracks are clearly different from felid tracks in a couple of respects: 1. Claw marks are usually visible in canid tracks, but almost never in felid tracks. 2. The toe pads are much bigger relative to the 'heel' pad. You can see this in the very nice sign guide that Yadav posted (and which I have saved...thanks Yadav!). However, depending on substrate, you may sometimes not see claw marks even for canids. 

- Within canids, dhole and jackal scats are very different. Dhole usually defecate on open soil, especially at the junction of roads/trails. They also tend to defecate together, so that you will often see several scats in the same spot. Jackals tend to defecate on low objects, such as tree stumps ever a low termite mound. Jackal scats usually have seeds within them (though of course, if you use diet to identify scats to species, you cannot use those scats to investigate that species' diet!). 

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with red and Bengal foxes (do you even get Bengal foxes in Nepal??).

Best,

Dev

Thx Dev for nice explanation.. We do have Bengal foxes but they have become very rare, almost non existent :(

Though we do have red fox and what I have found is they are fairly common in the highlands.. We recorded them from a forest in Makalu-Barun NP in eastern Nepal at around 2800 m and from far north-western district of Humla at around 2500 m.. 

Thankyou Hubertus, Dev and Yadav dai.

A question Dev. As you mentioned, in literatures too it is mentioned that dholes defecate in the same spot. Are these latrines of dholes distinct enough to distinguish it from other canids due to the number of scats at a single spot?

Thanks Miha Krofel. Really appreciate it. It was really hard to get good pugmarks. But when i did, it was clearly as you mentioned. The locals showed me the pugmarks and compared it with flower petals. Thanks again.