White-tailed Deer- Biology and Behaviour

 The whitetail is named for its large fluffy whitetail, they wave or flag as they run from danger.

Read More: Squirrels: Characteristics, Facts, and Distribution

White-tailed deer is one of the most recognizable and valued wild animals in North America. Few animals capture the hearts minds and imaginations like the whitetail deer, as it was first called beautiful graceful, and cunning, and the source of lean delicious animal protein for millions of people each year.

Distribution

Whitetail is one of six members of the deer family in North America. The others include mule deer, black-tailed deer, elk moose, and caribou. It is the most common deer that lived in the Eastern half of the United States.

White-tailed deer, normally a cherished North American game animal, have even become pests in suburbs and cities in the United States and Canada.

 The whitetail is the most numerous and widely distributed big-game animal in the world ranging from central Canada down through the United States, Mexico Central America, and even northern South America.

There are nearly 30 million whitetails in the United States alone.

They can live in mountains prairies, forests, deserts, and even jungles and they can also live in backyards, this is due to their ability to adapt to humans.

Read More: DeathStalker Scorpion

Nutrition

The incredible number of foods they can eat; hundreds of species of deer are primarily browsers. They concentrate on weeds and shrubs, acorns, nuts, and berries more than grazers which eat primarily grasses.

Body Colour

There is a stark contrast to their brownish Gray winter coats which blend nicely into the fall landscape. This coat is replaced during spring with a more reddish-colored version, it helps them stay cooler during the warmer summer months.

A typical heard of whitetails contains Bucks toes and fawns Bucks are males, one year of age or older those are females, one year of age or older fawns are both males and females, under one year of age pods can be further classified as buck fawns and doe fawns.

Life Span

The lifespan of a whitetail is typically less than four years in the wild. Some have been known to survive into their late teens and early 20s.  

The oldest-known white-tailed is 24 years.

In captivity, a typical whitetail family group is made up of related females, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, and their offspring.

Both males and females, under 1 and a half years of age, in time the young Bucks will be kicked out of the family group and forced to move to new areas to live, this process is called dispersal.

It is simply nature's way of ensuring that males and females from the same family don't interbreed the area in which the deer lives are known as its home range.

While it varies considerably the bucks home ranges typically around 750 to a thousand acres whereas, it does is roughly half of this.

Read More: Dragon lizard: Characteristics, habitat, and lifestyle

Social Behaviour

Unlike some species of deer that form large herds containing both bucks and doze.

Whitetail bucks and doze leave largely separate lives except during the breeding season.

During a late winter. Bucks often form bachelor groups which are simply groups of Bucks of similar age or rank.

These groups stay together throughout the spring and summer but break up before the breeding season or rut which typically occurs in November.

The timing of the rut can be highly variable in the Southern United States male whitetails grow antlers whereas females do not.

During a buck fawn, the first year of life it grows only small nubs or buttons that's why these youngsters are often called nubbins or button bucks.

During a buck's second and subsequent years of life, they grow larger antlers.

Each year at least through six and a half or seven and a half years of age the weight of a buck can vary considerably, based on where it lives, what it eats, and its age but they average around 170 to 200 pounds.

Some have weighed in at more than 375 pounds.

Those weigh considerably less with most playing around 80 to 100 pounds at maturity.

Whitetails are very good mothers; the first time a doe gives birth is approximately 195 to 200 days after breeding.

They typically give birth to twins every year, triplets are rare but do occur especially in areas with exceptional habitat quality.

White tails have a unique bond survival strategy, the first month of life instead of trying to keep up with their mother bonds, hide by lying motionless for days. In end only gets up to nurse or to be moved to a new hiding spot by its mother this lasts for nearly a month before the font is large enough and strong enough to keep up with its mother.

Read More: Texas coral snake: Identification, Characteristics, Facts, Behaviour, Poison, Antivenom

Communication

Fawns are very vulnerable during this period and many are taken by predators such as coyotes and bears.

Whitetails don't have a complex language like humans, they do communicate with each other.

They use more than a dozen calls to communicate everything from danger to aggression to attraction.

The most common vocalization or grunts and snorts and hunters often use calls that mimic these sounds. while hunting Tilden also uses behavior and body language to communicate aggressive behaviors like raising their heads high above another deer allowing their ears back or walking sideways, stiff-legged are clear signals of aggression.

Aggressive Behaviour

If the warning is not hated more aggressive behaviors are likely to follow including flailing or kickboxing among those Bucks will often make all their hair stand up on its end making themselves look darker and more menacing which may ultimately be followed by a fight, involving the clashing of antlers and file it pushing and shoving until one of the Bucks gives up.