Class:Mammals(Mammalia)
Order:Artiodactyls(Artiodactyla)
Family:Deer(Cervidae)
The red deer (Cervus elaphus Linnaeus, 1758) is the largest Italian ungulate.
Adult males can be up to 2.55 m long and 1.50 m tall at the withers, weighing between 150 and 250 kg. Females are considerably smaller, rarely reaching 2 m in length and weighing up to 150 kg. To these measurements must be added the tail, which in any case does not exceed 20 cm in length. In Italy, there are two subspecies, the one properly called Cervus elaphus, which was originally widespread throughout the peninsula, and Cervus elaphus corsicanus, endemic to Sardinia and Corsica, where it lives in various isolated populations.
The deer, often a symbol of elegance, has a slender, elongated torso; slightly indented in the groin area, rounded and muscular shoulders, broad chest and straight, powerful hindquarters. The neck, long, rather thin and slightly compressed, supports the head, which is elongated and broad at the occiput. The muzzle is straight, tapering from the forehead downwards, and the eyes, which are medium-sized and very lively, have oval pupils. The deer’s coat is close-fitting and smooth; in winter it is thick and greyish-brown, with a cream-coloured patch on the back. In summer, however, it is reddish and the patch on the back is less noticeable. Only males have branched antlers, consisting of two rods of bone tissue, which fall off every year at the end of February and are immediately replaced by new ones that sprout immediately. During growth, the antlers are covered with a tissue called “velvet”, which nourishes the growing bone through blood vessels, then atrophies and falls off when development is complete. The size and shape of the antlers depend on the age and health of the animal.
Diet and Habits
Deer can be found from sea level up to an altitude of 2,000 metres. Their ideal habitat consists of vast forests interspersed with large clearings and abundant water, which is useful not only for drinking but also for mud baths, which they take to rid themselves of parasites and cool down.
It is a grazer: in winter it eats grass, but also chestnuts, acorns and tree bark; in spring and summer it feeds mainly on forage species, supplementing its diet with buds and wild fruits.
Social behaviour and relations with humans
Both males and females live in single-sex groups. During the breeding season in autumn, the males emit loud bellows, audible even at great distances, with the aim of demonstrating their supremacy to other males and obtaining a greater number of females to form their harem. The mating season generally lasts from mid-September to mid-October. Pregnancy lasts about 240 days and each spring, a single fawn is born, rarely two. Fawns have a brown coat with white spots on their sides (speckles) for the first three months. This is a camouflage colouring that hides them from potential predators: they remain hidden in the grass while their mother grazes nearby.
Deer are one of the wolf’s natural prey. However, fawns can also be preyed upon by foxes, while carcasses provide food for omnivorous species such as bears and wild boars and scavenger birds such as griffon vultures.
Once present throughout the Italian peninsula, during the last century the deer became endangered due to indiscriminate hunting and the loss of suitable habitat. It was only in the 1960s that the establishment of protected areas and numerous reintroductions, carried out both to restore the species and for hunting purposes, allowed the deer to return to most of the Italian peninsula.
