They turned to polar bear feces, or scat, as it is commonly called. ( UK dialectal ) A land-tax paid in the Shetland Islands.Cognate with Scots scat ( “ tax, levy, charge, payment, bribe ” ), West Frisian skat ( “ treasure, darling ” ), Dutch schat ( “ treasure, hoard, darling, sweetheart ” ), German Schatz ( “ treasure, hoard, wealth, store, darling, sweetheart ” ), Swedish skatt ( “ treasure, tax, duty ” ), Icelandic skattur ( “ tax, tribute ” ), Latin scateō ( “ gush, team, bubble forth, abound ” ). ( colloquial ) An imperative demand, often understood by speaker and listener as impertinent.From Middle English scet, schat, from Old English sceatt ( “ property, goods, owndom, wealth, treasure payment, price, gift, bribe, tax, tribute, money, goods, reward, rent, a tithe a piece of money, a coin denarius, twentieth part of a shilling ” ) and Old Norse skattr ( “ wealth, treaure, tax, tribute, coin ” ) both from Proto-Germanic *skattaz ( “ cattle, kine, wealth, owndom, goods, hoard, treasure, geld, money ” ), from Proto-Indo-European *skatn-, *skat- ( “ to jump, skip, splash out ” ).
Here comes the principal we'd better scat. ( colloquial ) To leave quickly (often used in the imperative).Compare Swedish schas! ( “ shoo!, begone! ” ). Alternatively, from the expression quicker than s'cat ( “ in a great hurry ” ), perhaps representing a hiss followed by the word cat. Perhaps from the interjection scat!, itself an interjectional form of scoot! or scout!, from the root of shoot. ( music, jazz ) To sing an improvised melodic solo using nonsense syllables, often onomatopoeic or imitative of musical instruments.Scat ( third-person singular simple present scats, present participle scatting, simple past and past participle scatted ) ( animal excrement ) : droppings, spoor ( biology, hunting, trailing, trapping ).
With an animal like a polar bear, the second approach is more practical. In terms of diet, scientists can observe what goes in, or what goes out. Gormezano specializes in noninvasive methods for monitoring the behavior of predators. 2014 September 22, James Gorman, “For polar bears, a climate change twist ”, in The New York Times : Dr.