How the White tailed deer carries out the life processes
MOVEMENT
REPRODUCTION
SENSITIVITY
The White Tailed Deer carries out the life process of movement when they run, eat, drink, mate and gallop. Movement is pretty self explanatory. All animals need to be able to look for food, shelter and hide from threats and the White Tailed Deer is no exception. They are excellent jumpers and run incredibly fast, which aids them in escaping from predators (they can run as fast 48 km per hour).
Mating season for the deer (and a lot of other animals too) is known as rut. During this period, bucks are more susceptible to being hunted and killed, for they are much more active but less attentive and alert. Their main objective is to get together with as many does as possible. In order to mate with a specific female, they spar with each other using their antlers.
To ensure that other bucks do not mate with their many partners, male White Tailed Deer rub their lower-armpits on trees to sort of mark their territory. The glands produce a strong scent that warns other males that the area primarily belongs to them, as well as the females within it.
The ovaries, uterine horn, cervix, bladder, vestibule, vulva, vagina and uterine body make up the reproductive anatomy of the female WTD. For a male, the reproductive organs consist of the penis, urethra, testes, epididymis, prostate gland, vas deferens and the rectum. Alike humans, white tailed deer are impregnated through internal fertilization, (when the male’s sperm is administered into the female). Bucks generally do not stay with the doe and fawn, only sticking around for 1 year before leaving. This differs from the doe who will remain with her fawn for about 2 years.
Does give birth to 1-3 fawns after 6 months of mating and usually hide their young in bushes or in small shrouded areas while she goes out and feeds. If she has more than one fawn, she will hide them in different places. Fawns wait for their mother to return, and do not excrete until she comes back. Their fur is helpful because it camouflages them into their surroundings, making it much more difficult for predators to spot them. The timing of the birth of a fawn is extremely crucial for both the doe and fawn’s survival. For instance, if the fawn is born too late, it will not be prepared nor big enough for the brutal Winter. Though if it is born too early, the doe could have a hard time feeding herself and her fawn.
White Tailed Deer and many other deer species are very sensitive to their surroundings as they have good eyesight, hearing and have also been found out to have a great sense of smell.
Hunters have to mask their scent so deer don’t sense them. It has been discovered that a deer’s sense of smell is much like a dogs. However, deer have up to 297 million scent receptors in their nose, which is much more than dogs who have 220 million. Both these animals can smell from 500 to 1,000 times more acute than a human's (humans only have 5 million receptors). Deer even have a secondary scent gland found in their mouth called the vomeronasal organ. Scientists believe that the White Tailed Deer are able to sort out up to six smells at one time.
