Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
habitat: farmland, brush, deep forest, desert, swamp, suburb, and sometimes even in rather densely
populated portions of cities throughout most of the lower forty-eight states and the southern third of
Canada. Moreover, deer are abundant, often excessively so, throughout most of their range, so that
they've become a familiar part of the daily lives of countless millions of people.
White-tailed deer are indisputably our most economically important wild mammal. As our premier
big game animal, deer generate hundreds of millions of dollars in retail sales annually, and billions of
dollars in overall economic impact. In addition, there is the monetary value of some 250
million
pounds
of venison annually, which, at a conservative value of two dollars per pound, is worth $500 million,
to say nothing of the intangible value to countless hunters and their families of putting a highly prized
meat on the table through their own efforts.
Equally important is the intangible value of seeing and watching deer. Graceful, elegant, and beauti-
ful, whitetails command the admiration and affection of large portions of our continent's human popu-
lation, who love to watch these marvelous creatures. They add immeasurably to our quality of life, and
their presence serves to remind us of the values of a natural world often forgotten in the frantic pace of
our daily lives. By almost any human measure, the white-tailed deer is the undisputed favorite of our
North American mammals.
The origin of the whitetail's common name is obvious to anyone who has seen the animal when it's
suspicious, nervous, or in flight. When a whitetail is unconcerned, its rather long tail points downward
and is quite inconspicuous; the exposed upper side is mostly brown, with a narrow black border and
just a touch of white showing at each edge.
At the first sign of danger, however, a dramatic change occurs. The tail shoots up in an erect position,
revealing an all-white underside that gleams like a beacon. To make this warning signal even more im-
pressive, the deer flares the long white hairs out to the side and wags this highly utilitarian appendage
from side to side as a warning signal. When displayed in this fashion, it's easy to understand why a
white-tailed deer's tail is called its “flag.”
In sharp contrast with its common name, the whitetail's scientific name is something of a misnomer.
Its genus name,
Odocoileus,
is probably a misspelling of
odontocoileus,
Greek for “hollow tooth.” This
name is the work of an early French-American naturalist with the rather picturesque name of Con-
stantine Samuel Rafinesque, based on a single tooth that he found in Virginia. Whitetail teeth aren't
normally hollow, and Richard Nelson, in his splendid topic
Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in Amer-
ica,
speculates that Rafinesque might have found a thoroughly atypical hollowed-out tooth of a very
old deer.
Rafinesque himself is worth a small digression, for he was truly a bizarre and astonishing character,
even more picturesque than his name. His brilliant intellect, which was formidable, was exceeded only
by his eccentricity and arrogance. A zealous and shameless self-promoter, he made enemies even of
those who greatly admired his intelligence and boundless energy. More to the point, his zeal for identi-
fying new species sometimes led to hasty judgments that marred his otherwise admirable contributions
