The Natural Investigative Skills re-visited - Article 1 in a 4-part series

THE SIX SENSES: FOCUSING ON SIGHT, SOUND, TOUCH, TASTE/SMELL (INTUITION)

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The symmetrical beauty of nature is delivered to us in a myriad of ways, sometimes it is the repetitive pattern of a leaf generally indistinguishable amongst millions on a giant tree, each with its lifeblood of veins, or perhaps it is the wings of a butterfly, or the feathers of a bird duplicated either side of its centre line and perfect in almost identical beauty when viewed from either the left or the right. Or maybe it’s irregularity, where camouflage has enabled some creature to blend into the forest, like a leopard in a tree.

However, place any of these wonderful things outside of its intended zone of habitat and just like the tiger on a plain, or an Oak tree in a Eucalyptus forest, it will immediately stand out from a distance, a beacon of interest as, “What have we got here?”

Closer observation as we move quietly or observe slowly and we may have found the pad mark of the leopard, or heard its faint growl from a distance, or its cough nearby, maybe foreign to the land we were in, or maybe not.  Or perhaps we may have come upon oak leaves or an acorn on the banks of a stream indicating that somewhere upstream the mother tree is standing.

But if we did not see or hear these things and yet they were there, then the truth is we not in ‘sync’ with our senses and our surrounds.

I cannot dive deep into the world of symmetry, camouflage and being in tune with one’s senses when considering investigative thinking in just one article, because each one of these subjects and many more are a complex topic of study in their own right. However, I will try and touch on them enough for you to consider their fundamental importance in any investigation.

Switching on the senses

Before you can move and function in a sensory way you need to condition yourself.  In a modern world this is not easy.  However, when you are on the job, you need to switch off all distractions, get in the zone.  Block out ‘The White Noise’ and focus on and consider abstract or natural things you can see or hear and imagine by way of questioning, “What am I looking at”.  Then expand it to “What am I hearing, smelling, etc.”  This may awaken your senses into action.  Then try and float in the environment or scene, move quietly as an anonymous silent observer, concentrate from the outside, without causing a noisy calamitous disturbance, otherwise you will contaminate everything, the physical, inanimate or otherwise.  Then you can hone in on the detail.

Symmetry and atypical shapes

Generally, as you quietly observe the stage before you, in wide vision, or in detail, you may notice something that is asymmetrical to its close or general surrounds, or is atypical in contrast when compared to its neighbours.   The question relayed to your brain should be instantly, ‘Why is this so.”

An ability to recognise out of place shapes in the context above is important, for you may be looking down into rough groundcover upon a partially hidden weapon, bullet case, a fragment of cloth, or a piece of human bone.

Feathered AWACS and Drones

Colloquially in Australia the Cockatoo has always been synonymous as a term applied to ‘the lookout’ watching for any unwanted person, intruder, or more often, the law, sneaking up on any illegal activity being conducted in a backstreet, or in the bush.  The term is adopted from the behaviour of Cockatoos, who screech and squawk, when disturbed or alarmed by a predator or intruder in their bush domain.

The Australian Raven, much like Crows and other Corvids, along with vultures in other countries, are the early Airborne Warning Control System (AWAC’s) of nature.  Within twenty-four hours of a body being deposited or left in a bush area the Corvids may likely arrive to signal an interest.  Within a short time followed by other birds such as the ‘Willie-Wagtail’ who will turn up to mostly feed on the insects who are also arriving to begin feasting or laying their larvae on the body.^[ii]

So, there you have it, careful watching and listening and you may pick up the sight of Ravens, or the sound of Cockatoos indicating something worthy of further investigation. 

Butterflies Blowflies and Bad smells

The nose has it, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds, or perhaps smells. Again, you have to stop and concentrate, especially in range country, thick forest and scrub.  The breeze will often carry the scent of a cadaver some distance and play tricks with the direction and its location. 

If you have difficulty, then perhaps treat the odour of death like the triangulation of a telephone signal.  Pick the wind direction and then move out a few paces horizontal left and right in a line from a centre point marked where you first picked up the scent and identify the strongest scent on that line.  Once you have identified the point of strongest scent make that your new centre point. 

Now walk forward zig zagging left to right but more or less maintaining positioning on a straight line forward in the wind direction from that centre point, pausing every so often to scent the air. Stop periodically and look and listen for blowflies, also butterflies.  Male Butterflies need dead matter, rotting flesh, to soak up amino acids for reproductive purposes. I have seen butterflies feeding on dead animals in the bush.  So watch for butterflies. 

When you find your dead creature, do not be surprised if it is ripped apart and some of it scattered about, there are a lot of bush scavengers that will do this depending upon where you are and how long the remains have been there.

I recall a comment on the differing observations between modern Europeans and Indigenous First Nations people.  It was in an old book, ‘Tales of an Empty Cabin’ by Grey Owl^[iii].  There was a piece in the book in relation to a mother wild duck and her brood that landed near an expedition of long canoes sitting still in a remote lake in the Canadian Wilderness.  The Europeans glanced casually at the duck and then returned to what they were doing, whereas the indigenous crew members watched intently, interested in everything the duck did and how she connected with the water and her brood, taking it all in.  The lesson here is ‘One group is learning, the other isn’t’.

Intuition – The sixth sense

Again, I am not going too far into this sub-section, for the depth and breadth of topic is too vast to cover here.  I am only going to touch on a couple of areas.

When we think of the sixth sense, we often get lost in ‘gut feelings’ and ‘bad vibes’, which are generally driven by poor quality information fed into our sub-conscious, much like the more overt information we receive, which can be captured and even catalogued as in some cases as ‘red flags’. However, I am not referring to the ‘red flags’ gathered from the collection of more reliable and probable intelligence or information.  But what other types of sixth sense are there, and how much more sophisticated are they.

Sometimes, if we are in the zone mentally we can seem to sense something is not quite right, or is going to happen.  This is sometimes so where birds are generally about. I have noticed that things go very quiet and there doesn’t even appear to be any feint wisp of a breeze just before an earth tremor.  Consequently, much to the amusement of those around me, especially the younger generation, I have always called the quietude at times like this as, ‘earthquake weather’.  I don’t know if it is just me, or it is the real thing.  I have seen it reported on by others, and discussed on in scientific journals.  However, I don’t think I have found anything conclusive on the subject.

As far as wild creatures are concerned, especially birds I have noticed birds are always on the side-alert for danger, even when seemingly enjoying a feast.  They will suddenly become on guard and still, just for a second, at what to us might seem an imaginary predator.  It may be that we see nothing and they will return to their group enjoyment, or it may be that their caution was warranted as a cat or other predator materialises from its hidden squat in the shadows.

Again, the lesson is to watch nature, for most creatures have senses far advanced than humans, from which we can benefit, both from reading the signs to get the answers we need, or in more extreme circumstances, for survival.  Our ancestors and our first nations fellow humans knew this quite well, and yet we, in our haste to evolve without a closeness to nature have discarded our ability to observe, identify, create and think, and therefore to understand whom we are individually and as a species and how we connect with everything else on the planet. 

I noted a young fellow on the Internet who reported asking Chat GBT “What was the greatest illusion that humans believed in 2025”^[iv] the reply was, “that you were informed”.  Chat GBT also said, “uncertainty required thinking and thinking required stillness and stillness terrified you.”  When we analyse this, we have AI advising us that we have lost the ability to think because we are over stimulated by distractions, which has been created by humans by inventing the internet and now, ironically AI.  However, the message in this paragraph is so important in that stillness of mind is crucial in investigative thinking and that distractions and over stimulation are deadly.

It is not just about the wild places – It applies to the home, office anywhere.

What are we talking about here? It is not all about the mountains, or some quiet place in the woods.  The essential thinking of stillness of mind and investigative thinking is equally applicable in the home, the office, and the street or in fact anywhere.  The success comes with the skill and ability to switch off and immerse yourself into the zone.  If you walk into a building, a home, take everything in, feel the room and what is in it, put life into every object and imagine those who moved, worked, played and lived amongst them. Who were they, what relationship did they have with what you are looking at, why are they here?  Start to build a profile of the people from the possessions, the food in the cupboards, the refrigerator, the tools in the garden shed.  The plants and weeds in the garden.

If it is a big house be very careful to check the layout.  On a number of occasions, I have counted the number of windows from the inside and then the outside only to find they did not add up.  Later close examination of the interior revealed a hidden room with a concealed doorway, where stolen property, firearms, or drugs were found.  Simply, but similarly the absence of important documents, such as birth certificates, passports etc. in a room search may indicate a hidden safe somewhere.

What are you looking at – Signs and messages?

That same question of ‘What are you looking at?’ or ‘What have we got here?’ which we raised at the beginning of this article equally applies in the office or the home as it does the wilderness or bush.  Similarly, you do not need to have ravens or cockatoos around to tell you something is not quite right, there will be other signs.

It may be that something has been moved from where it should be; this may be evident because quite simply it is not there.  There could be a dust mark where it was, or a space in an otherwise cluttered or full shelf. It may be that something may have been moved to a position that would make it awkward or impractical to use in that position.  Situations like this need observation and thinking to identify the questions to be answered.

What is a sign? – Well for me a sign is a communication, which may trigger the question as to what is a communication. In most dictionaries it is something akin to ‘…the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs…a document or message imparting a view or information…’^[v]

So then how does a sign fit into the definition of a communication? –  In my article titled ‘Investigative Thinking – A Knowledge Opportunity!’  Published on LinkedIn in 2019 – I make reference to both communication and signs as follows,

[‘Communication is the action of connecting, intended or un-intended, with something else.

A message is the information contained within the communication.

A sign is an un-interpreted message’

‘The restricted common dictionary understanding of communication relates primarily to human interaction.  It goes in a different direction than a modern understanding of communication, which includes Internet, satellite and other developing technology.

My definition on the other hand suggests that every contact, intended/unintended, seen/unseen is a communication.  The sender and receiver can go beyond the human race, they can go beyond the animal world and include all that is, weather, the time of the day, the planets, and the universe’].^[vi]

Sometimes it may be that an observation of a scene in comparison with an explanation from a victim or a witness may reveal things that are inconsistent with that explanation. This requires you to listen to the storyteller and then to implant every aspect of that story in detail into the incident scene, piece by piece to ascertain if the explanation in all probability could occur, and with any aspects that would require direct corroborative physical evidence being established if present.   If the evidence, especially the direct physical evidence, where found does not corroborate the story, or presents another hypothesis, then you are heading into a deep autopsy of the initial report or a re-direction of the investigation.

We will likely talk about possibility and probability on another day.  However, that is where the thinking should head when the questioning begins.  Randomness and chance can play a part, however, measuring probability in investigations requires something much more sophisticated.  The ability to form structured professional judgement in sound decision making is required, which needs to be based on a formula which measures possibility/probability based on identifying and scoring most likely/possible/probable elements of a case. I created this in ‘The MiPerNet Score’, which was developed for use in the Warren Meyer case, a 2008 Missing Person case from Victoria, Australia^[vii].  However, ‘The MiPerNet Score’ is suitable for adaptation in any investigation.

Where are we headed?

It seems to me that with the advent of AI some humans are just starting to realise what the problem is, which it seems is that they are finally awakening to the reality that as individuals they are over stimulated, and are consequently suffering from an identity crisis.  The causes and influences of all of this is clever analysis of human behaviour utilised for marketing purposes and fed back to humans via the Internet and our fixation with self-indulgent social media.

I have been harping on about over-stimulation and identity for decades, ever since reading Robert Ardrey’s classic 1966 book, ‘The Territorial Imperative.’^[viii]  It is likely Ardrey understood human behaviour primarily because of his fields of study, which was both as an Anthropologist and as a Playwright.  This would give him an insight into human behaviour both on stage and in the scientific sense. 

In ‘The Territorial Imperative’, Ardrey explains that the three main drivers of human (mammal) behaviour, are stimulation, identity and security, which to understand better are best converted to their opposites of stimulation/boredom, identity/anonymity, security/anxiety.  Hence a bored, anonymous, anxious person has a real problem in survival.  

What Ardrey then said, was that all was competing for territory, which he explained as geographic or real territory.  What he did not know in 1966, however, was the existence of virtual territory, which is a form of both territory and communication. 

With the advent of virtual territory and modern communication it has changed the whole scenario.  I am sure Ardrey would now be modifying his thinking to include the Internet as territory, and territory still as the prize.  However, I could see communication now being elevated to the status of ‘The Key’, for as we have seen with self-expression on the internet, without communication there is no identity, no stimulation, only boredom, anonymity and anxiety.

The problem is we are now increasingly over stimulated, all hurrying to try and push our identity onto a light-speed world of virtual communication, to be seen, to be heard.  The collateral is that we are losing our ability to think and create and therefore from an investigative perspective we are disconnecting with everything, including ourselves.

As a society we have lost the ability to communicate, with the key to do so now being taken over by the cell phone and the Internet, and soon to be controlled by AI.  It all controls the communication, which commands the centre of identity and stimulus thereby disabling the user’s ability to meet their own needs for self-stimulation and identity gratification whilst still being able to develop deep communication and identify and understand the communication with others and everything else around them.

How can we re-connect?

In this article I have introduced you to re-connecting with your senses through investigative thinking.  There is much more to this than can be explained in just a few short pages.  Over the next four weeks I will release a number of articles which will introduce topics such as Remote Crime Viewing (psychic or intuitive investigative skills), The ancient art of tracking and its use today, and Winthropping, an insight into this fascinating study of predicting the deposition sites of everything from hidden treasure, to buried bodies, as perfected by the master Criminologist on the subject. Dr David Keatley.  I will also touch on Geographical profiling and other related scientific and mathematical supports to the main subjects.

All of these topics will help you reconnect with your senses and disconnect from the over stimulation of who you are meant to be by the Internet and social media.

However, if at the end of all of this you wish to learn more about what we do, then please reach out to us at via out contact link below at

Footprints in the Wilderness/Missing in Australia

www.footprintsinthewilderness.com.au

www.missinginaustralia.com.au

Written by Valentine Smith APM of www.footprintsinthewilderness.com.au on 9^th February 2025

^[i] Image in the forest.  Forest sculpture by ‘Bruno’s Art Sculpture Garden, Marysville, Victoria.

^[ii]  Bird watching for Bodies © by Valentine Smith APM 2022 www.footprintsinthewilderness.com.auhttps://www.enigmapi.com.au/post/birdwatching-for-bodies-observations-of-wildlife-to-locate-human-remains

^[iii] Tales of an Empty Cabin by WA-SHA-QUON-ASIN (GREY OWL) Published by Peter Davies London 1936

^[iv] Seggysaid.kit.com podcast/Instagram

^[v] The international Webster Dictionary of the English Language

^[vi] Investigative Thinking – A Knowledge Opportunity! Valentine Smith (Published on LinkedIn February 9 2019)

^[vii] The MiPerNet score © Valentine Smith 2018

^[viii] The Territorial Imperative © Robert Ardrey 1966 – Collins The Fontana Library.