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Roe deer - CAPREOLUS CAPREOLUS
Class: Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
The Name "Roe": "Roe" comes from the Old English word "ra," meaning "flecked colors." "Deer" comes from the German word "Tier," which simply means "animal."
Location: Europe, Asia Minor, and northern Asia.
Habitat: Thick woodland in mountainous regions and in lowlands.
Description: The smooth summer coat is reddish, and the winter coat is denser and grayish-brown. Only the stag has antlers, and these are shed annually. The antlers usually have six branches, although as many as ten branches have been observed. The head is slender and the legs are long. The tail is more or less nonexistent. Length of head and body about four and a half feet, 30 inches a the shoulder. The males weigh over 100 pounds, with females smaller than males.
Behavior: The roe deer is generally solitary but sometimes lives in small family groups (a male, a female, and that year's young). The stag marks his territory with secretions from glands on the forehead, from anal and metacarpal glands, and with urine.
Reproduction: Males and females may mate in summer and again in autumn, but the one to three young are always born in the spring because the embryo will not begin to develop until autumn. Gestation then proceeds normally for five months. The fawns, whose coats are speckled at birth, remain concealed for the first three to five days, but then begin to follow their mother. They nurse for two to three months, and go off on their own a few months later.
Go to the Artiodactyla Page to learn more about all the even-toed hoofed animals.
Or go to the Deer Index to study other
deer.
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