Ask The Biologist

The Mane Question Is...

The Mane Question Is...

By Bob Humphrey

Like whitetails with fangs, species sometimes show ancient traits.

QUESTION: I shot a buck this fall that had a mane. What causes this, and how common is it?

ANSWER: While one can never be certain about such things, the most likely scenario is what biologists sometimes refer to as a vestige. Modern deer species sometimes reveal physical traits that are characteristic of a common ancestor.

For example, the Siberian musk deer and Chinese water deer both possess elongated canine teeth or fangs, a feature that occasionally shows up in whitetails. Red deer and elk, which are more closely related to whitetails have pronounced manes. Though less obvious, they do sometimes occur in whitetails, and biologists speculate these ancestral leftovers appear when the same recessive genes are paired from different parents.

While there isn’t much real science on it, I found one reference that suggested this phenomenon might occur in about 1 in 10,000 deer.

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