Etymology
Depending on their species, male deer are called ''stags, harts, bucks'' or ''bulls,'' and females are called ''hinds, does'' or ''cows.'' Young deer are called ''fawns'' or ''calves''. A group of deer is commonly called a ''herd''. ''Hart,'' from
Old English ''heorot'' ‘deer’, is a term for a stag, particularly a
Red Deer stag past its fifth year. It is not commonly used, but
Shakespeare makes several references, punning the sound alike "hart" and "heart" for example in
Twelfth Night. "The White Hart" and "The Red Hart" are common English
pub names, and the county
Hertfordshire is named after them.
The
history of the word deer is quite interesting in that it was originally quite broad in meaning and came to be
specialized. In
Middle English, ''der'' (
O.E. ''dēor'') meant a beast or
animal of any kind.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/75/D0087500.html This general sense gave way to the modern sense by the end of the Middle English period, around 1500. The
German word ''tier'' and the
Dutch word ''dier'', cognates of English deer, still have the general sense of "animal."
The
adjective of relation pertaining to deer is ''
cervine''.
Habitat
Deer are widely distributed, and
hunted, with indigenous representatives in all continents except
Antarctica and
Australia. Deer live in a variety of biomes ranging from
tundra to the
tropical rainforest. While often associated with forests, many deer are
ecotone species that live in transitional areas between forests and thickets (for cover) and prairie and savanna (open space). The majority of large deer species inhabit temperate mixed deciduous forest, mountain mixed coniferous forest, tropical seasonal/dry forest, and savanna habitats around the world. Clearing open areas within forests to some extent may actually benefit deer populations by exposing the understory and allowing the types of grasses, weeds, and herbs to grow that deer like to eat. However, adequate forest or brush cover must still be provided for populations to grow and thrive.
Small species such as the
brocket deer and
pudus of Central and South America, and the
muntjacs of Asia do occupy dense forests and are less often seen in open spaces. There are also several species of deer that are highly specialized and live almost exclusively in mountains, grasslands, swamps and "wet" savannas, riparian corridors surrounded by deserts. Some deer have a circumpolar distribution in both North America and Eurasia. Examples include the
reindeer (caribou) that live in Arctic tundra and taiga (boreal forests) and
moose that inhabit
taiga and adjacent areas.
The highest concentration of large deer species in temperate
North America lies in the Canadian Rocky Mountain and Columbia Mountain Regions between Alberta and British Columbia where all five North American deer species (
White-tailed Deer,
Mule deer,
Caribou,
Elk, and
Moose) can be found. This is a region that boasts mountain slopes with moist coniferous forests and alpine meadows, and lowlands with a mosaic of cropland and deciduous parklands within vicinity of lakes and rivers. The Caribou live at higher altitudes in the subalpine meadows and alpine tundra areas. The White-tailed Deer have recently expanded their range within the foothills of the Canadian Rockies due to conversion of land to cropland and the clearing of coniferous forests allowing more deciduous vegetation to grow.
The highest concentration of large deer species in temperate Asia occurs in the mixed deciduous forests, mountain coniferous forests, and taiga bordering North Korea, Manchuria (Northeastern China), and the Ussuri Region (Russia). These are among some of the richest deciduous and coniferous forests in the world where one can find
Siberian Roe Deer,
Sika Deer,
Caribou,
Elk, and
Moose. Just south of this region in China, one can find the unusual
Pere David's Deer. Deer such as the
Sika Deer,
Thorold's Deer,
Central Asian Red Deer, and
Elk have historically been farmed for their antlers by
Han Chinese,
Turkic peoples,
Tungusic peoples,
Mongolians, and
Koreans. Like the
Sami people of
Finland and
Scandinavia, the
Tungusic peoples,
Mongolians, and
Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia, Northern Mongolia, and the Ussuri Region have also taken to raising semi-domesticated herds of
caribou.
The highest concentration of large deer species in the tropics occurs in Southern Asia and Southeast Asia in the Countries of India, Nepal, and at one time, Thailand. Northern India's Indo-Gangetic Plain Region and Nepal's Terai Region consist of tropical seasonal moist deciduous, dry deciduous forests, and both dry and wet savannas that are home to
Chital,
Hog Deer,
Barasingha, Indian
Sambar, and
Indian Muntjac. Just slightly north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain is the Vale of Kashmir, home to the rare Kashmir Stag, a subspecies of
Central Asian Red Deer. The Chao Praya River Valley of Thailand was once primarily tropical seasonal moist deciduous forest and wet savanna that hosted populations of
Hog Deer,
Schomburgk's Deer (now extinct),
Eld's Deer, Indian
Sambar, and
Indian Muntjac. Today, both the
Barasingha and
Eld's Deer are endangered or rare. The
Hog Deer populations in Thailand are also rare. Chital and Barasingha live in large herds, and Indian sambar may also be found in large groups. How all these deer can co-exist in one area is due to the fact that they prefer different types of vegetation for food. These deer also share their habitat with various herbivores such as Asian elephants, various antelope species (in India), and wild oxen.
Central and South America host various smaller brocket deer species, and Southeastern Asia hosts various smaller
muntjac species. Unlike the larger deer species mentioned above, these deer species are rather solitary and tend to hide in dense cover and have lower population densities.
Australia has six
introduced species of deer that have established sustainable wild populations from Acclimatisation Society releases in the 19th Century. These are
Fallow Deer,
Red Deer,
Sambar Deer,
Hog Deer,
Rusa deer, and
Chital Deer.
Red Deer introduced into
New Zealand in
1851 from English and Scottish stock were domesticated in
deer farms by the late 1960s and are common farm animals there now. Seven other species of deer were introduced into New Zealand but none are as widespread as Red Deer.
[Deer An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966]
Physical characteristics, diet, and reproduction
Deer differ from other ruminants in that they have
antlers instead of
horns. Antlers are bony growths that develop each year (usually in summer) and, in general, it is only male deer that develop them (although there are exceptions). A young buck's first pair of antlers grow from two tiny bumps on their head that they have had from birth. The antlers grow wrapped in a thick layer of velvet and remain that way for several months, until the bone inside is hard; later the velvet is torn away (not shed contrary to popular belief). The one way that many hunters are able to track main paths that the deer travel on is because of their "rubs". A rub is used to deposit scent from glands near the eye and forehead and physically mark territory. Deer also have a
Tapetum lucidum which gives them sufficiently good
night vision. During the mating season, bucks use their antlers to fight one another for the opportunity to attract mates in a given herd. The two bucks circle each other, bend back their legs, lower their heads, and charge.
A doe generally has one or two fawns at a time (triplets, while not unknown, are uncommon). The gestation period is anywhere up to ten months for the European
roe deer. Most fawns are born with their fur covered with white spots, though they lose their spots once they get older (excluding the Fallow Deer who keeps its spots for life). In the first twenty minutes of a fawn's life, the fawn begins to take its first steps. Its mother licks it clean until it is almost free of scent, so predators will not find it. Its mother leaves often, and the fawn does not like to be left behind. Sometimes its mother must gently push it down with her foot. The fawn stays hidden in the grass for one week until it is strong enough to walk with its mother. The fawn and its mother stay together for about one year. A male usually never sees his mother again, but females sometimes come back with their own fawns and form small herds.
Deer generally have lithe, compact bodies and long, powerful legs suited for rugged woodland terrain. Deer are also excellent swimmers. Their lower cheek teeth have crescent ridges of enamel, which enable them to grind a wide variety of vegetation. Deer are ruminants or cud-chewers and have a four-chambered stomach. Nearly all deer have a facial gland in front of each eye. The gland contains a strongly scented
pheromone, used to mark its home range. Bucks of a wide range of species open these glands wide when angry or excited. All deer have a
liver without a
gallbladder. The
Chinese water deer is the only species that differs from others in that they have no antlers and bear upper canines developed into tusks.
Deer are selective feeders. They are usually
browsers, and primarily feed on
leaves. They have small, unspecialized
stomachs by
herbivore standards, and high nutrition requirements. Rather than attempt to digest vast quantities of low-grade, fibrous food as, for example,
sheep and
cattle do, deer select easily digestible shoots, young leaves, fresh
grasses, soft
twigs,
fruit,
fungi, and
lichens.
Antlers
All male deer have
antlers that are shed and regrown each year from a structure called a pedicle. Sometimes a
female will have a small stub. The only female deer with antlers are
Reindeer (Caribou). Antlers grow as highly vascular spongy tissue covered in a skin called velvet. Before the beginning of a species' mating season, the antlers calcify under the velvet and become hard. The velvet is then torn away leaving hard bone antlers. After the mating season, the pedicle and the antler base are separated by a layer of tissue, and the antler falls off.
Each species has its own characteristic antler structure, e.g. each white-tailed deer antler includes a series of tines sprouting upward from a forward-curving main beam. Mule deer (and black-tailed deer), species within the same genus as the white-tailed deer, instead have bifurcated (or branched) antlers -- that is, the main beam splits into two, each of which may split into two more.
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/OFWbiggamerevised12-20-06%20(2).pdf
For
Wapiti and
Red Deer, a stag having 14 points is an "imperial", and a stag having 12 points is a "royal".
If the antlers deviate from the species' normal antler structure, the deer is considered a non-typical deer.
Economic significance
Deer have long had economic significance to humans. Deer meat, for which they are
hunted and
farmed, is called
venison. Deer organ meat is called ''umble''. See
humble pie.
Musk, which comes from the gland on the
abdomen of
musk deer, is used in medicines and perfumes. Deerskin is used for shoes, boots, and gloves, and antlers are made into buttons and knife handles.
The
Saami of
Scandinavia and the
Kola Peninsula of
Russia and other nomadic peoples of northern
Asia used
reindeer for food, clothing, and transport.
The
caribou is not domesticated or herded as is the case in
Europe but is important to the
Inuit. Most commercial venison in the
United States is imported from
New Zealand.
Deer were originally brought to
New Zealand by European settlers, and the deer population rose rapidly. This caused great environmental damage and was controlled by hunting and poisoning until the concept of deer farming developed in the 1960s. Deer farms in New Zealand number more than 3,500, with more than 400,000 deer in all.
Automobile collisions with deer impose a significant cost on the economy. In the U.S., about 1.5 million deer-vehicle collisions occur each year in, according to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those accidents cause about 150 deaths and $1.1 billion in property damage annually.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/AUTOS/11/14/deer_crash/index.html
Taxonomy
Note that the terms indicate the origin of the groups, not their modern distribution: the
water deer, for example, is a New World species but is found only in
China and
Korea.
It is thought that the new world group evolved about 5 million years ago in the forests of
North America and
Siberia, the old world deer in
Asia.
Hybrid deer
In ''
Origin of Species'' (1859)
Charles Darwin wrote "Although I do not know of any thoroughly well-authenticated cases of perfectly fertile hybrid animals, I have some reason to believe that the hybrids from Cervulus vaginalis and Reevesii
... are perfectly fertile." These two varieties of muntjac are currently considered the same species.
A number of deer hybrids are bred to improve meat yield in farmed deer. American Elk (or Wapiti) and Red Deer from the Old World can produce fertile offspring in captivity, and were once considered one species. Hybrid offspring, however, must be able to escape and defend themselves against predators, and these hybrid offspring are unable to do so in the wild state. Recent DNA, animal behavior studies, and morphology and antler characteristics have shown there are not one but three species of Red Deer: European
Red Deer,
Central Asian Red Deer, and American Elk or Wapiti. (The European Elk is a different species and is known as
moose in North America.) The hybrids are about 30% more efficient in producing antler by comparing velvet to body weight. Wapiti have been introduced into some European Red Deer herds to improve the Red Deer type, but not always with the intended improvement.
In New Zealand, where deer are introduced species, there are hybrid zones between Red Deer and North American Wapiti populations and also between Red Deer and Sika Deer populations. In New Zealand Red Deer have been artificially hybridized with Pere David Deer in order to create a farmed deer which gives birth in spring. The initial hybrids were created by artificial insemination and back-crossed to Red Deer. However, such hybrid offspring can only survive in captivity free of predators.
In Canada, the farming of European Red Deer and Red Deer hybrids is considered a threat to native Wapiti. In Britain, the introduced Sika Deer is considered a threat to native Red Deer. Initial Sika Deer/Red Deer hybrids occur when young Sika stags expand their range into established red deer areas and have no Sika hinds to mate with. They mate instead with young Red hinds and produce fertile hybrids. These hybrids mate with either Sika or Red Deer (depending which species is prevalent in the area), resulting in mongrelization. Many of the Sika Deer which escaped from British parks were probably already hybrids for this reason. These hybrids do not properly inherit survival strategies and can only survive in either a captive state or when there are no predators.
In captivity, Mule Deer have been mated to White-tail Deer. Both male Mule Deer/female White-tailed Deer and male White-tailed Deer/female Mule Deer matings have produced hybrids. Less than 50% of the hybrid fawns survived their first few months. Hybrids have been reported in the wild but are disadvantaged because they don't properly inherit survival strategies. Mule Deer move with bounding leaps (all 4 hooves hit the ground at once, also called "stotting") to escape predators. Stotting is so specialized that only 100% genetically pure Mule Deer seem able to do it. In captive hybrids, even a one-eighth White-tail/seven-eighths Mule Deer hybrid has an erratic
escape behaviour and would be unlikely to survive to breeding age. Hybrids do survive on game ranches where both species are kept and where predators are controlled by man.
Impact on popular culture
Heraldry
Deer are represented in heraldry by the
stag or
hart (or less often by the
hind). Stag's heads and
antlers also appear as
charges.
Examples can be found in the arms of
Hertfordshire and its county town of
Hertford, both examples of
canting arms (a heraldic
pun).
Several Norwegian municipalities have a stag or stag's head in their arms:
Gjemnes,
Hitra,
Hjartdal and
Voss.
A deer appears on the arms of the
Israeli Postal Authority (see
Hebrew Wikipedia page
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%93%D7%95%D7%90%D7%A8)
Image:Arms-herts.jpg|Arms of Hertfordshire, England
Image:Blason Raon aux bois.svg|Arms of Raon aux Bois, France
Image:Wappen Dotternhausen.png|Arms of Dotternhausen, Germany
Image:Thierachern-coat of arms.svg|Arms of Thierachern, Switzerland
Image:Wappen Friolzheim.png|Arms of Friolzheim, Germany
Image:Bauen-coat of arms.svg|Arms of Bauen, Switzerland
Image:Wappen Albstadt.png|Arms of Albstadt, Germany
Image:Earl Bathurst coa.png|Arms of the Earls Bathurst
Image:Gjemnes_komm.png|Arms of Gjemnes, Norway
Image:Hitra_komm.png|Arms of Hitra, Norway
Image:Hjartdal_komm.png|Arms of Hjartdal, Norway
Image:Voss_komm.png|Arms of Voss, Norway
Literature and art
For the role of deer in mythology, see deer in mythology.
The "Golden Hind" was an English galleon best known for its global circumnavigation between 1577 and 1580, captained by Sir Francis Drake.
The book Fire Bringer is a fiction book that is about a young fawn who is born and goes on a quest to save the deer kind who are called the Herla in the novel.
In Christmas lore (such as in the narrative poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas"), reindeer are often depicted pulling the sleigh of Santa Claus.
One famous fictional deer is ''Bambi''. In the Disney film ''Bambi'', he is a white-tailed deer, while in Felix Salten's original book ''Bambi, A Life in the Woods'', he is a roe deer.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 novel ''The Yearling'', written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was about a boy's relationship with a baby deer, later adapted to a children's film that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Saint Hubertus saw a stag with a crucifix between its antlers while hunting on Good Friday and was converted to Christianity by the vision.
In the ''Harry Potter'' series, the Patronus Charm that Harry Potter conjures to repel Dementors is a silver stag. James Potter, Harry's father, had an Animagus form as a stag. Also, Harry's mother Lily, and subsequently Severus Snape's, Patronus form was a doe.
In one of the stories of Baron Munchhausen, the baron encounters a stag while eating cherries and without ammunition, fires the cherry-pits at the stag with his musket, but it escapes. The next year, the baron encounters a stag with a cherry tree growing from its head; presumably this is the animal he had shot at the previous year.
A Samurai warrior named Honda Tadakatsu famously adorned deer antlers on his helmet.
Deer have been a subject in Chinese paintings numerous times as a tranquility symbol.
In ''The Animals of Farthing Wood'', a deer called The Great White Stag is the leader of all the animal residents of the nature reserve White Deer Park.
In ''The Queen'', a 14 point "Imperial" stag plays a role in the film.
Deer are depicted in many materials by various pre-Hispanic civilizations in the Andes. [Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. ''The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera.'' New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997.]
Several German towns are called "Hirschberg", a name composed of ''Hirsch'' (deer) and ''Berg'' (hill or mountain).
Among East European Jews, "Hirsh" - Yiddish for "stag" - was a common male name, and was among other others the name of several prominent Rabbis; in this community there was, however, no equivalent female name. In contemporary Israel, several Hebrew names for this animal are commonly used as both male and female names. These include "Tzvi" (צבי) and "Eyal"(אייל) - two synonymous words for "stag"; "Tzviya" (צביה) and "Ayala" (איילה) - the respective parallel words for "Hind" or "Doe"; as well as "Ofer" (עופר) and "Ofra"(עפרה), respectively the male and female words for the young of this animal - which are all commonly used as first names among the Israeli population. In addition, there are Israelis having as their first name "Bambi", derived from the well-known Disney animated film.
References