Deer Get Into Some “Dumb” Situations
Deer are as smart as they need to be. Specifically, Deer are good at knowing how to avoid predators, identifying edible food, recognizing social signals, and being familiar with their environment, each of which is an activity critical for their survival. Though their ability to recognize threats and avoid potential predators, including humans, can appear intelligent it is based on their natural survival instincts. Deer also have great memory and can recognize and remember shapes, locations and any dangerous situations they have encountered before.
A Sense of Home
Most deer establish home ranges which indicates that they have a sense of place. Even so, deer can alter their daily movement in response to danger or harassment at a specific location. Eluding humans and predators who’s scent they can detect from great distances. Anecdotal evidence suggests that deer, especially during hunting season, can recognize pending threats and seek out and utilize safe hiding places such as root cellars and drainage tunnels.
Deer Communication
Mother and doe interactions include recognition of wide array of sounds. Complex social behaviors during courtship and rut such as those for white tail deer and red deer indicate a basic sense of planning and anticipation. Communication between deer is complex and is generally categorized into signals associated with aggressive and non-aggressive states. Among the non-aggressive signals are a doe’s contact call and breeding bellow. Aggressive signals include buck snorts and foot stomping that is utilized to warn potential threats to stay clear and to signal other deer that danger is near by.
The video below seems to illustrate some deer in Japan that have “learned” to correctly use a pedestrian cross walk to safely cross a busy street:
Deer Behavior is Dependent on Instinct
Though deer demonstrate some learning abilities and some capability to work through a problem, the majority of their behavior is driven by instinct and is intended to keep them safe from danger and successfully complete other basic survival activities.
Deer behavior can be modified by manipulating their basic instincts. Hunters have utilized knowledge of how to manipulate deer behavior for years. Likewise, homeowners and gardeners also know that convincing an intruding deer that a predator is near-by is an effective way to keep the deer away. Deer repellent products such as Shake-Away’s Deer Repellent Packs are designed to produce the fear of a near-by predator in deer by effectively dispersing the scent of coyote urine in the area protected by the packs.
