Animal · United States, Canada, Mexico
White-tailed deer
Odocoileus virginianus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The white-tailed deer is a slender brown deer of North and Central America that lifts its bright white tail like a flag when it senses danger. Males grow a new set of antlers every year and drop them again in winter.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the white-tailed deer live?
Home: Forest edges, fields and meadows of North and Central America.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 1.6-2.2 m long, about 1 m at the shoulder. It weighs about 70 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
White-tailed deer live where the forest meets open ground. They browse on leaves, buds, grasses, acorns and fruit, and a single deer works through hundreds of kilograms of plant food in a year. When something startles them they bound away with the tail held straight up, flashing the white underside so the others know to follow. A running deer reaches about 48 km/h and clears fences and ditches in long leaps. Fawns are born with rows of white spots that break up their outline in dappled light, and they lose the spots during their first summer. A hundred years ago the species had almost vanished from parts of North America, but protection brought it back, and today it is one of the most common large animals on the continent.
Find it on the globe
White-tailed 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
Why is it called a white-tailed deer?
The underside of its tail is bright white. When the deer is frightened it raises the tail like a flag, and the white patch tells the other deer nearby that it is time to run.
Do all white-tailed deer have antlers?
No. Normally only the males grow antlers. They start in spring, use them in autumn contests with other males, and shed them in winter. Females with antlers are extremely rare.
How fast can a white-tailed deer run?
Over a short distance it reaches about 48 km/h and jumps over fences and streams in long bounds. It does not run far, though: it heads straight for cover among the trees.
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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