48 Fun Facts About Deer

Unlike deer antlers, which are bone, the horns of cattle and sheep are sheathed in what?

Keratin is the same stuff as human fingernails, which is why horns keep growing for life while an antler is dead bone by the time it is fully grown.

What are wild reindeer called in North America?

Caribou is the North American name for wild Rangifer tarandus, while 'reindeer' is kept for domesticated herds, such as those shipped from Siberia to Alaska in the 1890s.

What is the largest living species of deer?

The moose stands up to about 2.1 metres at the shoulder and bulls can top 700 kg; Europeans call the same animal an elk, while North Americans use 'elk' for the wapiti.

The world's smallest deer, standing about 32 to 35 cm at the shoulder, is which South American animal?

The pudu, a genus of two Andean species, is the world's smallest deer; the northern pudu stands just 32 to 35 cm at the shoulder, and the name comes from Mapudungun, the Mapuche language.

Which continent has just one native deer, a subspecies of red deer?

Africa's only native deer is the Barbary stag, a red deer subspecies of the Atlas Mountains in Algeria and Tunisia; Australia and Antarctica have no native deer at all.

Instead of antlers, what does the male water deer of Korea and China grow?

Male water deer grow long tusk-like canine teeth, up to about 8 cm, in place of antlers, earning the nickname 'vampire deer'; South Korea's population is estimated at around 700,000.

How many chambers does a deer's stomach have?

Like cattle, deer are ruminants with a four-chambered stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum), though theirs is small for the group, so they browse low-fibre, nutrient-rich plants rather than coarse grass.

In Old English, the word 'deer' (dēor) originally meant what?

German 'Tier' and Dutch 'dier' still just mean animal; English narrowed the sense to one family around 1500.

Which deer has the heaviest antlers relative to its body mass, along with the reindeer?

Its flat, palmate antlers average around 8 grams per kilogram of body weight; the smallest deer's are the lightest at 0.6 g/kg.

Roughly how long is the gestation period of a white-tailed deer?

A white-tailed doe carries her fawns for about 200 days, roughly six and a half months, so fawns conceived in the November rut are born in late May or June.

Roughly how wide could the antlers of the extinct Irish elk span?

The Irish elk's antlers spanned up to about 3.6 metres (12 feet) and weighed around 40 kg; despite its name, its closest living relatives are fallow deer, not any animal called an elk.

What is the scientific name of the white-tailed deer?

The white-tailed deer is Odocoileus virginianus, described by Zimmermann in 1780 from Virginia; the mule deer is its close relative Odocoileus hemionus in the same genus.

By about 1930, the US white-tailed deer population had crashed to roughly what number?

Unregulated market hunting had cut the US herd to roughly 300,000 by about 1930; regulated seasons and changing land use rebuilt it to an estimated 30 million by 2005.

A white-tailed deer's coat is reddish in summer but what colour in winter?

The autumn moult replaces the reddish summer coat with a grey-brown winter coat of longer, hollow hairs that trap air for insulation.

The smallest subspecies of white-tailed deer in North America is confined to which US state?

The Key deer, a dwarf white-tail subspecies, is found only in the Florida Keys, mainly Big Pine Key and No Name Key, where it was marooned as sea levels rose after the last ice age.

White-tailed deer were introduced for hunting to which Nordic country in the 1930s?

Finland received a handful of white-tailed deer from Finnish-Americans in Minnesota in the 1930s; the descendants had grown past 100,000 animals by 2020 and were spreading toward Sweden.

The mule deer of western North America is named after a mule because of its large what?

Mule deer take their name from their large, mule-like ears, which they swivel independently to pick up sound; the two black-tailed deer subspecies of the Pacific coast belong to the same species.

Which US state records the highest number of deer-vehicle collisions, an estimated 115,000 in 2013?

State Farm's 2013 claims data put Pennsylvania first with about 115,000 deer collisions; West Virginia drivers faced the highest individual odds of hitting one, and crashes peak in the October-December rut.

Chronic wasting disease was first identified in 1967 in mule deer in which state?

CWD was first seen in 1967 in captive mule deer at a Colorado wildlife research facility near Fort Collins; like BSE and scrapie it is a prion disease, later found across dozens of states and in Norway from 2016.

Moose have been recorded diving to what depth to reach plants on a lake bottom?

Their hollow guard hairs help them float and their splayed hooves work as paddles; orcas have been seen taking moose swimming between islands.

The fold of skin hanging under a moose's chin is called a dewlap or, more commonly, a what?

The moose's dewlap is usually called a bell; both bulls and cows carry one, and its purpose is uncertain, though bulls may use it to spread scent during the rut.

Moose introduced in 1878 and 1904 became the dominant large mammal on which Canadian island?

Newfoundland received two moose in 1878 and four more from New Brunswick in 1904; their descendants, well over 100,000 by the 2000s, reshaped the island's forests and became its most notorious road hazard.

A study using a microphone on trophy antlers found that a moose's broad palmate antlers do what?

The flat antler acts like a parabolic reflector, so bulls with antlers hear better than those without.

The name 'wapiti', used for the North American elk, comes from a Shawnee and Cree word meaning what?

Wapiti means 'white rump' in Shawnee and Cree; elk fluff up the pale patch around the tail to signal alarm, and the word was adopted to avoid confusion with the European elk, which is the moose.

During the rut, bull elk advertise themselves with a loud whistle-like call known as what?

Bugling is the bull elk's rutting call, a bellow that rises into a whistle reaching about 4,000 Hz; European red deer stags roar instead, a lower call suited to forests.

Which subspecies, found west of the Cascade Range, is the largest of the North American elk?

Roosevelt elk, named for Theodore Roosevelt, are the largest North American elk; introduced to Alaska's Afognak Island in 1928, bulls there have been estimated at up to 600 kg.

What is a female red deer called, the counterpart of a stag or hart?

The female red deer is a hind, the male a stag or hart; the red deer is the fourth-largest living deer species after the moose, elk and sambar.

European roe deer have an unusually long 10-month gestation because of what reproductive quirk?

Roe deer show delayed implantation, rare among hoofed mammals: they mate in July and August but the embryo lies dormant until about December, so fawns arrive the following May or June.

When alarmed, a roe deer flashes its pale rear patch and makes a sound much like which animal?

An alarmed roe deer gives a short, hoarse bark much like a dog's while flashing its white rump patch; muntjac are nicknamed 'barking deer' for the same habit.

From which permanent bony stalks on the skull do a deer's antlers grow?

Antlers grow each year from pedicles, permanent bony stalks on the frontal bones; the antler is cast from the pedicle after the rut, and the next set grows from the same base.

How many chromosomes does a female Indian muntjac, the mammal with the lowest count, have?

Males have seven; the closely related Reeves's muntjac has 46, the same number as a human.

Britain's wild muntjac and Chinese water deer largely descend from escapees of which estate?

The 11th Duke of Bedford collected exotic deer at Woburn Abbey from the 1890s; Reeves's muntjac and Chinese water deer escaped or were released from the park and spread across England.

Père David's deer is known in Chinese as sibuxiang, a nickname meaning what?

Sibuxiang means 'four not alike': the deer supposedly has a camel's neck, a cow's hooves, a donkey's tail and a stag's antlers, yet resembles none of those animals.

The chital of India is better known in English by what name?

The chital, or axis deer, is called the spotted deer because, unlike most deer, it keeps its white spots for life; 'chital' comes from the Sanskrit citrala, meaning 'variegated'.

In Japanese Shinto belief, the sika deer is regarded as what?

The deer of Nara are held to be messengers of the gods: legend says the deity Takemikazuchi arrived at Kasuga Shrine riding a white deer, and more than 1,000 sika roam Nara Park as a protected natural monument.

A 2011 UCL study found reindeer can see light in which range, invisible to humans?

Urine and fur that vanish into snow to our eyes stand out sharply in UV, and reindeer eyes even change from gold in summer to blue in winter.

Some North American reindeer herds migrate farther than any other land mammal, up to roughly what distance?

Barren-ground herds such as the Porcupine caribou travel up to about 5,000 km a year, the longest migration of any land mammal, covering 19 to 55 km a day and swimming straight across lakes and rivers.

Roughly how many reindeer are managed by Sámi villages in Sweden?

Sweden's 51 Sámi villages (samebyar) manage roughly 250,000 reindeer between them; reindeer are the only deer herded on a large scale, and the herds graze free on open pasture rather than in enclosures.

Which company created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1939 as a promotional booklet?

Robert L. May wrote Rudolph for Montgomery Ward, which gave away some 2.4 million copies of the booklet to shoppers in 1939; May had considered naming the reindeer Rollo or Reginald.

How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh in the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Eight reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid and, in the 1823 printing, Dunder and Blixem (later Donner and Blitzen); the red-nosed ninth was a department-store creation of 1939.

In Felix Salten's 1923 novel, Bambi was which species of deer, before Disney made him a white-tail?

Salten's Bambi is a roe deer of the Austrian forests; Disney's 1942 film made him a white-tailed deer for American audiences, and the film joined the National Film Registry in 2011.

In Greek myth, capturing which golden-antlered deer of Artemis was Heracles' third labour?

The Ceryneian Hind, sacred to Artemis, was chased by Heracles for a full year before he caught her; a golden-antlered female suggests the Greeks had heard of reindeer, the only deer whose females bear antlers.

Which Speyside single malt, founded in 1887, uses a stag's head as its emblem?

Glenfiddich, founded by William Grant at Dufftown in 1887, takes its name from the Gaelic for 'valley of the deer' and carries a stag's head on every bottle.

The word 'venison' comes from the Latin venari, meaning what?

Venison comes via Old French from the Latin venari, 'to hunt', and originally meant the meat of any hunted animal; in Britain, dealing in it once required a game dealer's licence.

What is the scientific family name for true deer?

True deer form the family Cervidae, split into two subfamilies: Cervinae, with red deer and muntjac, and Capreolinae, with reindeer, roe and white-tailed deer.

How many introduced deer species have established wild populations in Australia?

Fallow, red, sambar, hog deer, rusa and chital were all released by 19th-century acclimatisation societies; the continent has no native deer.

In which year were red deer first introduced to New Zealand from English and Scottish stock?

The first red deer reached New Zealand in 1851, from English and Scottish park herds; they spread so widely that by the late 1960s the country pioneered farming them for venison.

By what term are soft, freshly grown antlers known before they harden into bone?

The soft tissue mineralises and its blood vessels close off; the antlers of some species are eaten in China while still 'in the velvet'.