17 Facts About Deer

Deer appear in art from Paleolithic cave paintings onwards, and they have played a role in mythology, religion, and literature throughout history, as well as in heraldry, such as red deer that appear in the coat of arms of Aland.

Deer hunting has been a popular activity since the Middle Ages and remains a resource for many families today.

Deer can be seen in several national parks in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka of which Kanha National Park, Dudhwa National Park, and Chitwan National Park are most famous.

Deer constitute the second most diverse family of artiodactyla after bovids.

Deer undergo two moults in a year; for instance, in red deer the red, thin-haired summer coat is gradually replaced by the dense, greyish brown winter coat in autumn, which in turn gives way to the summer coat in the following spring.

Related searches

Deer are ruminants, or cud-chewers, and have a four-chambered stomach.

Deer have a tapetum lucidum, which gives them sufficiently good night vision.

Deer are browsers, and feed primarily on foliage of grasses, sedges, forbs, shrubs and trees, secondarily on lichens in northern latitudes during winter.

Deer are believed to have evolved from antlerless, tusked ancestors that resembled modern duikers and diminutive deer in the early Eocene, and gradually developed into the first antlered cervoids in the Miocene.

Deer treated the musk deer as a cervid, placing it under Telemetacarpalia.

Deer were an important source of food for early hominids.

Deer had a central role in the ancient art, culture and mythology of the Hittites, the ancient Egyptians, the Celts, the ancient Greeks, the Asians and several others.

Deer was the principal sacrificial animal for the Huichal Indians of Mexico.

Deer are depicted in many materials by various pre-Hispanic civilizations in the Andes.

Deer have been an integral part of fables and other literary works since the inception of writing.

Deer hunting is a popular activity in the U S that can provide the hunter's family with high quality meat and generates revenue for states and the federal government from the sales of licenses, permits and tags.

Deer have often been bred in captivity as ornaments for parks, but only in the case of reindeer has thorough domestication succeeded.