Whitetails with manes are an oddity you don’t see every day.
QUESTION: What exactly is a mane on a deer? The photos I’ve seen on Google were no help. On a Lion or even an Elk, I get it, but on a whitetail I’m at a loss.
ANSWER: While rare, white-tailed deer with a mane on the back of their neck do occasionally show up. I harvested one in 2020. This characteristic is what biologists sometimes refer to as a vestige or remnant.
Without getting too technical, Genotype is the genetic make up of an organism. Modern deer, elk and moose all share a common ancestry and have similar but not identical genotypes. Phenotype is the physical expression of a genetic trait or characteristic and is the result of how different genes combine. Moose have a narrow, bristly mane, while an elk’s is larger and more shaggy.
While we don’t know for certain, biologists speculate these ancestral leftovers appear when the same recessive genes are paired from different parents, and the odds of a maned whitetail are about 1 in 10,000.
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