50 Fun Facts About Deer

Horns, found on cattle and sheep, are covered in a sheath made of 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?

Same species, two names: the US FDA even rules that in North American English the animal is caribou if wild and reindeer if domesticated.

What is the largest living species of deer?

It stands nearly 2.6 metres tall and weighs up to 800 kg; confusingly, in Europe the same animal is called an elk.

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

Its name is a loanword from Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina.

Which continent has only one native deer, a subspecies of red deer confined to the Atlas Mountains?

That lone native is the Barbary stag; Australia has no native deer at all, only introduced ones.

The male water deer of Korea and China grows no antlers. What does it grow instead?

The downward-pointing fangs have earned it the nickname 'vampire deer'; the South Korean population is around 700,000.

How many chambers does a deer's stomach have?

Deer are ruminants like cattle, but with unusually small stomachs for the group, so they need low-fibre, high-nutrition food 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.

A newborn fawn stays hidden in the grass for roughly how long before it can walk with its mother?

The mother licks the fawn almost free of scent so predators cannot smell it, then leaves it alone while she grazes.

The extinct Irish elk had the largest antlers of any deer. Roughly how wide could they span?

Despite the name, its closest living relatives are fallow deer, not either animal called an elk today.

White-tailed deer have been recorded running at about what speed?

They can also clear a 9-foot fence from a standstill and leap 30 feet forward.

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

Regulated hunting and habitat change turned that around so completely that by 2005 the estimate was around 30 million.

A white-tailed deer's coat is reddish in summer. What colour is it in autumn and winter?

The seasonal moult also gives the winter coat hollow hairs for insulation.

The Key deer, the smallest deer in North America, lives only in which US state?

It is a dwarf subspecies of the white-tail marooned in the Keys after the last ice age; most now live on Big Pine Key.

White-tailed deer were introduced for hunting to which Nordic country in 1935?

They were also released in Cuba, Jamaica, New Zealand and the Czech Republic; in Nova Scotia they wiped out the native caribou by carrying brainworm.

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

Its two black-tailed subspecies were once treated as a separate species but hybridise freely with the rest.

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

West Virginia is the state where an individual driver is most likely to hit one; nationally the crashes peak between May and November.

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

Like BSE and scrapie it is caused by misfolded prion proteins, and it has since spread across dozens of states and into Scandinavia.

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?

Both bulls and cows have one, and nobody is entirely sure what it is for.

Moose were introduced in 1878 and 1904 to which Canadian island, where they are now the dominant large animal?

Their effect on the island's native plants and animals is well documented, and they are famously a road hazard there.

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?

Elk fluff up the pale patch around the tail to signal alarm, and the second-largest deer bugles rather than roars.

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

Unusually for such a big animal, the call can reach 4,000 Hz; European red deer stags roar instead, an adaptation to forests.

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

Introduced to Alaska, the biggest bulls there are estimated at 600 kg, and a bull's antlers alone can weigh 18 kg.

A male red deer is called a stag or hart. What is the female called?

Red deer are Europe's largest native deer and the fourth-largest deer species alive, after the moose, elk and sambar.

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

They mate in summer but the embryo pauses for months, so fawns arrive the following June regardless.

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

Muntjac are nicknamed 'barking deer' for the same reason.

Apart from the moose, which is the only living deer with flattened, palmate antlers?

Its name comes from its pale brown coat, and its European species has been introduced almost everywhere deer are kept in parks.

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 Dukes of Bedford collected exotic deer there from the 1890s; the same herd later saved Père David's deer from extinction.

Which British nobleman built up the herd that saved Père David's deer from extinction?

His great-grandson sent deer back to China in the 1980s; by 2020 there were about 2,825 in the wild there again.

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

It supposedly has the neck of a camel, hooves of a cow, tail of a donkey and antlers of a deer, yet looks like none of them.

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

Its name comes from a Sanskrit word for 'variegated'; unlike most deer it keeps its white spots for life.

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

That is why more than 1,200 sika roam freely around the temples of Nara Park, where they are officially designated a natural treasure.

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.

Reindeer make a clicking sound as they walk. What produces it?

Loud knee-clicking turns out to be an honest signal of body size, helping herd members sort out who outranks whom.

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

On the move they cover 19 to 55 km a day and will swim straight across a lake or broad river rather than go round.

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

Reindeer are the only deer ever semi-domesticated on a large scale, though most still roam free on pasture rather than living in enclosures.

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

Writer Robert L. May considered calling him Rollo or Reginald, and chose a reindeer because his daughter loved the deer at Lincoln Park Zoo.

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

Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen; the red-nosed ninth was a department-store invention more than a century later.

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

Disney's animators actually studied mule deer from Arrowhead, California, and the film joined the National Film Registry in 2011.

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

Heracles chased her for a full year; the golden antlers on a female are the giveaway that Greek myth was thinking of a reindeer.

Which company has used a leaping deer in its logo for more than 155 years?

Founder John Deere's breakthrough was an 1837 self-scouring steel plough made from a Scottish saw blade; the slogan is 'Nothing Runs Like a Deere'.

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

It originally covered the meat of any hunted animal, and in Britain selling it legally once required a licence.

What is the scientific family name for true deer?

It splits 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?

They have been farmed there since the late 1960s; seven other deer species were also introduced but none spread as widely.

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'.