Animal · Germany, France, Poland
Roe deer
Capreolus capreolus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The roe deer is the small deer of European fields and forest edges, and the one people here are most likely to see. It is not the female of the red deer, although that mix-up is very common.
Picture credit: Giles Laurent (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Jojo (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Jerzystrzelecki (CC BY 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the roe deer live?
Home: Forest edges, fields and meadows across Europe.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, France, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Austria.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 95–135 cm long, 63–67 cm at the shoulder. It weighs about 22 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A roe deer and a red deer are two different animals, not a female and a male: a roe deer stands about as high as a large dog, a red deer as high as a pony. Only the buck grows antlers, and they are small, with three points at most; he sheds them every autumn and grows a new pair over winter. The roe deer does something no other hoofed animal in Europe does. It mates in July and August, but the tiny embryo then stops growing and simply floats in the mother for about four months. Only around December does it attach and start developing again, so that the fawns are born in May and June when there is grass everywhere. Biologists call this delayed implantation, and it means a roe deer times its birth to the food rather than to the mating. A fawn's spotted coat is not decoration: lying still in tall grass, the pattern breaks up its outline so well that a fox can walk past it.
Find it on the globe
Roe 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
Is a roe deer the female of a red deer?
No. They are two separate species. A roe deer stands about as high as a large dog and weighs around 22 kg; a red deer stands as high as a pony and can weigh ten times as much. The female roe deer is called a doe.
Why are fawns born in May?
Because the roe deer mates in high summer but pauses the pregnancy. The embryo floats free for about four months and only starts growing around December, so the birth lands in the season with the most grass.
Why do fawns have spots?
The pale spots copy the flecks of sunlight that fall through leaves onto tall grass. A fawn lying completely still is very hard to make out, which is why it is left alone in the grass while the mother feeds nearby.
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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