Animal · Germany, France, Spain
Red deer
Cervus elaphus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The red deer is the large deer of Europe, and in autumn the forest belongs to it: the stags roar for weeks on end. The sound carries far further through trees than any smaller deer can manage.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Lviatour (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the red deer live?
Home: Woodland and open grassland across Europe and western Asia.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Türkiye.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 160–250 cm long. It weighs about 200 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A stag's antlers are not horns. Horns stay on for life; antlers are thrown away and made again every single year. They start growing in spring, covered in a furred skin that feeds them, and they are bone — bone that grows faster than any other bone in any mammal. A typical pair reaches about 71 cm and weighs a kilogram; the largest run to 115 cm and five kilograms. All of that is built in a few months, out of nothing, for one purpose: the autumn rut, when stags roar, walk in parallel sizing each other up and only fight if neither backs down. The roar itself is shaped by the forest — a deep sound travels between trunks where a high one would be swallowed. When the rut ends, the antlers have done their work, and at the end of winter the stag drops them in the undergrowth and begins again.
Find it on the globe
Red deer is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
What is the difference between antlers and horns?
Antlers are bone and are shed and regrown every year. Horns are a bony core in a sheath of the same stuff as a fingernail, they never come off, and they keep growing for life. Deer have antlers, cattle and goats have horns.
Why do stags roar?
To hold a group of hinds together and to tell other stags how big he is without fighting. The roar is deep because a deep sound travels between tree trunks; a high call would not get through a forest.
Is a roe deer the female of a red deer?
No, they are two different species. A red deer stands as high as a pony and can weigh ten times what a roe deer weighs. The female red deer is called a hind.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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