On Saturday, March 16, I went for a walk in an area where I typically do not show up during the dawn hours when roe deer activity tends to peak.
This time, I had chosen this trail and on a grassland edging a forest, I noticed three roe deer individuals foraging.
They were quite close to the trees and the grassland was located between a small forest area (which no longer could be described as purely riparian forest although it was adjacent to riparian forest) and a dirt road leading to garden allotments.
Two of the individuals were larger than the third one.
I believe that all three individuals were female because antlers would have become obvious and antlers are typically also developed in the first year of life.
However, I am not overly certain regarding the state of antlers of the third individual.
The adult deer were foraging without keeping hardly any vigilance at all.
The roe deer in this area are probably better acquainted with our routines and behaviours than we are, and adults rarely exhibit intense reactions upon simply encountering humans.
The youth (I suppose it was a fawn born in 2023) was either more vigilant or more curious.
Altogether, I believe that this group of roe deer, prior to March, had been foraging closer to the forest or in the forest, or along some other types of edges.
Now that it has been warmer for a longer while, the vegetation on the autumn-mown grassland might have begun to emerge and the roe deer might have returned to these more open foraging grounds.
These particular individuals reside in a mostly tree-covered habitat with very little agricultural influence (large fields), and the fawn might not have been very accustomed to foraging out in the open.
On the other hand, there are a few fields across the road and I have noticed larger groups of roe deer foraging there still during winter.
Thusly, it is possible that the little roe was accustomed to foraging on fields but not in small groups (three individuals vs. at least 5 – 7 individuals).
Anyhow, I believe that they had not been foraging on the grassland itself before this warm-weather spell.
The fawn was quite alert and watchful but it was difficult to say whether it was nervous or it was curious in this new habitat.
The fawn cannot have been unexposed to human disturbance (passers-by, cars, dogs etc.) because it lives in an area where human activity is of moderate intensity.
Thereby, I believe the fawn was mostly explorative in its intentions.
I was trying to keep unnoticed for a long time in order to observe the trio.
However, I had to return home and therefore I had to take the road which would lead me also out in the open.
As I stepped on the road, the fawn spotted me almost at once.
It watched me for about half a minute and I stood still but also not immobile so that the fawn could understand I was a living being (because I was prepared to stroll down along the road which would expose me even further).
The roe deer fawn was not entirely certain what this development entitled, and it (she) approached one of the adults (female).
The fawn walked up to the female very closely (less than 50 cm distance between them), turned its back to me and, without making physical contact, stared intently at the adult female who I suppose was the fawn’s mother.
The mother was thereby advised of the fawn’s ‘question’, and she, too, raised her eyes.
The female noticed me, as well, but she was very unwilling to react because her experience likely told her this was a minor disturbance that would not normally interrupt foraging.
The fawn turned at an angle so that it could sort of face both her mother and me.
She kept standing with her nose quite near her mother’s nose.
It seemed to me as if the fawn was trying to smell her mother.
This suggested to me that she was either seeking reassurance (sense of security) from her mother (which could have been attained through some chemical pathways secreted through facial glands.
Roe deer supposedly do not possess preorbital glands but they do possess forehead glands (apocrine glands) and maybe nasal glands (I have not found information to confirm or to deny the latter).
Apocrine glands are sweat glands and, at least in humans, they can apparently produce odours that are mediated by emotional reactions.
Thusly, I find it possible that the fawn was, truly, asking her mother for some explanations and then reading these explanations from her mother’s stress/hormonal responses (or lack thereof) expressed through glandular production.
In humans, apocrine glands become functional when the individual reaches puberty.
Perhaps in roe deer, as well, secretions from the forehead glands are mediated by maturity and the fawn who maybe does not yet possess these secretions (or they are altered, less pronounced), must yet inquire with her own mother in order to ‘read the whole story’.
It is an interesting assumption that animals might perceive their inner states through neurological reactions to their own physiological reactions.
Animals might not merely react to their internally produced states but also to their own externally produced scents, sounds, movements etc. (as if they had become a part of the situation they were evaluating and the assessment was both that of ‘how I should react under these circumstances?’ but also that of ‘how this individual who is me should react under these circumstances?’.
Namely, in order for the young female roe deer to understand the situation but also to understand how she herself felt about it, she needed to process information produced by a roe deer’s glandular secretions.
As the fawn was not mature and her glands might not have been as developed, she might only have been able to ‘get the full picture’ from her mother who possessed these respective glands.
(The only concern that I have is whether female roe deer also have forehead glands because they are not supposed to be territorial and forehead glands might be important in territorial social interactions.)
Thus, juveniles might depend on adults in their exploration and education if part of the data is obtained through reading their own body responses which are not yet fully developed.
Perhaps the young female partly approached her mother for reassurance but partly in order to get a reading off her mother’s physiological response.
Her motivation might have been that of anxiety but it might also have been that of a desire to understand the circumstance more thoroughly (to gather all data).
I also found it interesting that the fawn, at first, almost hid its face from me fully turning to her mother.
Had the fawn been anxious, it should have, all the while during this process, kept an eye on me.
Instead, for about half a minute, she turned her butt at me.
It could have been the result of confusion or some misguided attempt to hide (if I cannot see it, it cannot see me) but I believe there is some other underlying cause.
Whenever I have had the chance to compare observations of roe deer groups vs. red deer groups (unfortunately, I get to observe red deer very rarely), it has appeared to me that roe deer rely on their sight to a greater degree than the red deer and that this reliance is based on the roe deer perception of group identity.
Some time ago I wrote this post Roe deer observation – meeting familiar individuals after brief separation in which I described a re-encounter by two roe deer individuals in which I felt sight was playing an important part.
At the time I did not consider identification by scent that could have been contributing to the behaviour of facing the other individual.
However, I still suspect that vision is socially significant in roe deer.
The difference between red deer and roe deer, as I reckon, subjectively, seems to be based on that the red deer, while in a group, derive their identity from the group while roe deer think of their group as a composition of individuals which is never as cohesively (uniformly) perceived but, which to them, is always dynamic.
The reaction to a change in a group situation, in roe deer, seems to be derived not from the general ‘feel’ of the group or leadership by dominants but rather by the ‘totalling’ of the reactions showed by all individuals involved.
Red deer focus on how the group is acting and coordinate themselves with this overall activity (a type of a ‘mood’) or with the attitudes by those dominant to them.
As a result, it seems to me that red deer are mostly in touch with these generalized motivations (felt on a group level or expressed by the authorities).
Roe deer, meanwhile, appear to exhibit a different type of cohesion whereby they do not form a ‘group attitude’, nor the attitude is set by highly dominant individuals.
There can be dominant individuals but I believe that the dominance is extremely flexible and might shift according to group composition, circumstance and even the particular individuals involved.
I believe that dominance might even change within the same situation.
For example, one individual might become dominant if the group needs to make decisions regarding a social situation but another individual might be dominant if the group needs to make decisions regarding predatory threat etc.
I think that roe deer keep track of all the individuals and their personal responses/competences and then these attitudes by individuals are totalled in order to determine the group response and to adjust individual behaviour to the specific scenario.
Namely, the roe deer would evaluate that their group consists of, e.g., 5 individuals and then they follow up that:
- 1 individual is my mother whom I should follow and whose reactions concern me the most;
- 1 individual belongs to my home range and I see them quite often and if we flee, this individual will also come with us and thereby I might base my reactions on whether this individual thinks that it is time to retreat to our shared shelter because this individual might me relied upon with regard to deciding when to run;
- 1 individual joins us frequently on the foraging grounds but they seek shelter elsewhere and therefore their concern regarding when to hide and when to run might be different and while I can trust their vigilance responses, I should not follow them when they run;
- 1 individual is the offspring to the third individual and they will respond similarly as their mother but I cannot rely on their vigilance as effectively as that of its mother because this individual is as young as I am and we get spooked easily.
When this assessment has been made, the roe deer would base their individual group responses on this ‘total’ of motivations, skills and behavioural patterns.
Individual recognition, under such circumstances, might be highly important and, due to the complexity and the dynamic nature of the social group status evaluation, the roe deer might have added vision to their array of social identification and social communication mechanisms.
However, I still have not explained why the female fawn in my Saturday observation turned her butt at me to face her mother.
Firstly, I think that the fawn was not overly concerned and that this behaviour should be interpreted more in the context of curiosity than in the context of alarm.
I find it somewhat difficult to decypher this behaviour but my guess is that the fawn was looking at her mother perhaps to see how the fawn herself perceived her mother under these new circumstances.
One of the basic differences within roe deer social groups is that of adults vs. fawns (juveniles).
I believe it is one of the first ‘categories’ that roe deer youngsters learn to develop in their minds to facilitate the process of making group decisions.
Namely, youngsters are not as experienced as adults and they mostly follow adults.
Thereby, youngsters are not those whose responses matter the most because they are only learning to respond appropriately to different situations.
Accordingly, as there is not a pronounced size dimorphism between sexes but there is a size difference between age groups (fawns vs. adults), fawns might base some of their social estimates on size of the individuals involved in the particular group setting by largely discarding the reactions of the ‘small category’.
However, they also belong to the ‘small category’ and perhaps they are aware of it as other fawns (and perhaps adults) disregard some of their reactions and overreactions, as well.
Upon gradually reaching maturity, there might be a shift in self-reliance (as well as in reliance on peers who were born in the same year) which is associated with visual apprehension of one’s own size as well as the size of one’s peers.
This fawn did not have a peer in the group and it was still visibly smaller than the two other adults.
On the other hand, the fawn was large enough to be passed for an adult (if there had not been any other adults around to compare with, I would not have perhaps thought this was a youngster).
And I believe that the fawn wished to determine its own new social status and its own new social identity.
More specifically, the fawn noticed me and rather than being spooked (which would probably be a typical fawn reaction), it felt curiosity and a certain level of calm despite the new habitat and despite the fact I was a stranger.
This might have been a change in how the fawn had been perceiving its circumstances prior to this event.
The fawn might have recognized that its inner state was oddly ‘zen’ and then it might have sought out the comparison with the attitudes by the other adults.
The other two adults were also very ‘zen’.
Thus, the fawn might have learned that its inner response was accurate and reliable.
In order to further confirm this development in its maturity, the fawn might have approached her mother to:
- gain extra information regarding scent responses;
- look at her mother and have her mother look at her.
The first motivation I have already explained in more detail.
The latter motivation might involve self-identification through comparison of sizes and social status.
The fawn perhaps wished to determine whether it saw its mother as still greatly larger in size than herself.
And perhaps it was important for the fawn that her mother looked at her, too.
A simple size comparison could have been achieved without approaching the mother (and it could have been based on comparing the sizes of all three individuals involved).
However, the fawn chose to approach the mother very closely and almost to force the mother look into the fawn’s face.
In fact, the fawn partly obscured the view for her mother, and thus the fawn’s main motivation was not to have her mother investigate the circumstance (me) but to look at her.
At this proximity, any scents could have been caught off the mother, as well, without standing in the mother’s face.
Additionally, the fawn did not attempt to have her mother look at her overall (from head to hoof) but to look at her face.
I feel that there might be something important regarding self-identity, social group identity and individual recognition in roe deer with respect to visual inspection of facial features.
On one hand, this could be mechanism to ‘measure up’ to mother (to see if the fawn could reach high enough, akin to our doorpost height charts).
Maybe it is easier for fawns to tell the size differences of the individuals around them but it is more difficult to accurately estimate their own size in comparison to others.
Thereby, ‘measuring up’ by standing very close might be an easier method.
But I also think that there was more to it.
At the present, I cannot tell what it is but I hope to figure it out.
If anything, it reminds me of the quote from ‘The Two Towers’ (LOTR), ‘I know your face, Eowyn.’
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Today (Mar 28, 2024) I had an opportunity to observe this trio under better lighting conditions. I had been wrong. The other adult individual was a male. This sex difference could bear significance if the female fawn was not merely looking for her mother’s guidance but also for guidance by another female (constructing her identity as a maturing female).
Notes by Ieva 