European fallow deer
The European fallow deer, also known as the common fallow deer or simply fallow deer, is a species of deer native to Eurasia. It is one of two living species of fallow deer alongside the Persian fallow deer. It is historically native to Turkey and possibly the Italian Peninsula, Balkan Peninsula, and the island of Rhodes near Anatolia. During the Pleistocene it inhabited much of Europe, and has been reintroduced to its prehistoric distribution by humans. It has also been introduced to other regions in the world.
Taxonomy
Some taxonomists include the rarer Persian fallow deer as a subspecies, with both species being grouped together as the fallow deer, while others treat it as a different species. The white-tailed deer was once classified as Dama virginiana and the mule deer or black-tailed deer as Dama hemionus; they were given a separate genus in the 19th century.Description
The male fallow deer is known as a buck, the female is a doe, and the young a fawn. Adult bucks are long, in shoulder height, and typically in weight; does are long, in shoulder height, and in weight. The largest bucks may measure long and weigh. Fawns are born in spring around and weigh around. Their lifespan is around 12–16 years.Much variation occurs in the coat colour of the species, with four main variants: common, menil, melanistic, and leucistic – a genuine colour variety, not albinistic. White is the lightest coloured, almost white; common and menil are darker, and melanistic is very dark, sometimes even black.
- Common: Chestnut coat with white mottles, it is most pronounced in summer with a much darker, unspotted coat in the winter. The light-coloured area around the tail is edged with black. The tail is light with a black stripe.
- Menil: Spots are more distinct than common in summer and no black is seen around the rump patch or on the tail. In winter, spots are still clear on a darker brown coat.
- Melanistic : All year the coat is black, shading to greyish-brown. No light-coloured tail patch or spots are seen.
- Leucistic : Fawns are cream-coloured; adults become pure white, especially in winter. Dark eyes and nose are seen. The coat has no spots.
Only bucks have antlers, which are broad and shovel-shaped from three years. In the first two years the antler is a single spike. Their preferred habitat is mixed woodland and open grassland. During the rut, bucks spread out and females move between them; at that time of year fallow deer are relatively ungrouped compared with the rest of the year, when they try to stay together in groups of up to 150.
Agile and fast in case of danger, fallow deer can run at a maximum speed of over short distances. Being naturally less muscular than other cervids such as the roe deer, they are not as fast. Fallow deer can also jump up to high and up to in length.
The diet of the European fallow deer has been described as highly flexible, and able to adapt to local conditions. A 1977 study of European fallow deer in the New Forest of Britain found that European fallow deer were selective mixed feeders, feeding primarily on grass during the spring and summer, while primarily feeding on acorns and other mast during autumn until late December, with winter foods including grass as well as shrubs like brambles, bilberry, heather, holly, as well as ivy and coniferous material.
Distribution
During the Last Interglacial around 130-115,000 years ago and prior, European fallow deer were widely distributed over Europe, occurring as far north as the British Isles. During the Last Glacial Period the range of the species collapsed due to unfavourable climate conditions, surviving in refugia in Anatolia and probably the Balkans and possibly elsewhere, though the fossil record of their distribution during this time is sparse.Turkey
Turkey is the only country known to have definitively natural populations of European fallow deer since the Last Glacial Maximum, but populations there have since become endangered and almost fully extirpated. European fallow deer in Anatolia underwent a major population decline due to the spread of agriculture and hunting, and populations in the Marmara and Aegean regions went extinct by the turn of the 20th century. Other wild populations of Turkish fallow deer survived for longer on islands at Ayvalık Islands Nature Park, Gökova, and Adaköy near Marmaris, but also appear to have died out in recent years. Currently, the only extant wild population of the species known to be undoubtedly natural lives in Düzlerçami Game Reserve in the Mount Güllük-Termessos National Park in southern Turkey, although the area has been largely fenced since, making the population only semi-wild. This population is very few in number and is genetically distinct from other European fallow deer.A 2024 study suggests that the Turkish populations of fallow deer are ancestral to most fallow deer found throughout Europe as well as introduced populations worldwide. The translocations of fallow deer out of Turkey were facilitated by Roman-era trade networks. The only other refugium found was one in the Balkans, whose surviving descendants are significantly fewer in number.
Native but originally extinct
Southern Balkans
On mainland Greece and some Greek islands, such as Corfu, Kythira, and Thasos, that were connected to mainland due to lower sea level or proximity to land, fallow deer were present during the last ice age. A belief arose that the species was almost extinct in Greece, returning during the Neolithic. Contrary to that, remains indicate that reduced numbers survived in several parts of the country like in Thessaly, Peloponnese and Central Greece, increasing and becoming common during mid Neolithic, but mostly east of Pindus mountain range and especially in Macedonia and Thrace. During the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age, the species survived on the islands of Corfu and Thasos, appeared on Euboea, and began to be introduced by man to other islands, including Crete, some of the Cyclades, Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos, Samos and Sporades.Early-historic-period remains have been found in eastern Greece and on the islands of Thasos, Chios, Rhodes and Crete. A few surviving individuals were observed on Samos in 1700, while the species became extinct on Lesbos late in the Ottoman period. On the Greek mainland, wild fallow deer survived until the 16th century in northeastern Chalkidiki, until the 19th century in the forests of Mount Olympus, Vermio Mountains, Arakynthos, Evrytania and Boeotia and until the 1910s in Thesprotia. The last individuals were hunted in Acarnania during the 1930s.
In Bulgaria, the autochthonous population of fallow deer is believed to have declined and disappeared after the 9th or 10th centuries, and the species was reintroduced there much more recently. The species remained in European Turkey into the 19th century. A male fallow deer was captured in Thrace in 1977 and translocated to Düzlerçamı, suggesting that a small population existed there at that time. In Albania, the fallow deer seemed to be plentiful during the first half of the 19th century.
A 2024 genetic study suggests that the Balkans served as one of two refugia for fallow deer during the glacial periods, alongside Anatolia. Members of this population were also translocated around Europe during the Iron Age and Roman Empire, but have largely been replaced by Turkish-origin fallow deer aside from parts of southern Europe. The Balkan fallow deer are thought to represent the ancestors of modern Iberian, Italian, and Rhodes fallow deer, with the Rhodes population dating back to Neolithic translocations.