A researcher in the ecology of Hokkaido sika deer... said the two animals presumably butted heads during the autumn rutting season. The researcher speculated that they were unable to separate because of their interlocking horns and that the rival eventually died. As decay set in, the body rotted away but the head stayed on, and the survivor of the epic battle carried it through the winter....
There's a lesson here about fighting...
Who is really free?
Posts
62 comments:
A head with antlers?
That's precisely how you take over entire nations.
That is one hardcore deer, holy smokes.
"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"
Lesson about fighting?
"Win!"
Nature red in tooth and claw. This brings to mind both Trump and his opponents. Those who spend time battling in the swamp/sewer perhaps belong there and all will at minimum be covered in sludge.
“Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight”
Lessons about fighting are only good if everyone takes them to heart.
I saw that and though a photoshop of our President Emeritus wearing Mitch McConnell's head for a hat would be awesome.
John "stochastic extremist" Henry
Just gotta say it. " I LOVE your blog"
I would think if the two were entangled both would be dead. Neither could eat well, and even if one died the other would be unable to drag that body around to get to food long enough to wait for decay. It might be more likely that he came across the carcass while foraging got entangled and wrested the decaying head away when trying to extricate himself. But I am not naturalist...
Nature is so cute and cuddly!
Is today's theme "things not to read at the breakfast table"?
… takes them to hart
Two heads are not necessarily better than one...
"… takes them to hart"
Hart to hart?
Skull deer sings to survivor deer:
Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you
Every single day
And every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
[Chorus with the harts]
Oh, can't you see you belong to me?
How my poor hart aches with every step you take
The lesson I take from this is that if you are going to fight, it is essential that you win.
Wa St Blogger, yep. Or, the predators that came for the dying deer would also have gotten the live one.
The stags are reflective of toxic masculinity. Clearly they could use some counseling.
My game cameras have had several whitetail bucks going head-to-head. Later pics/videos show the combatants wandering around together.
I wonder if the lady elks are going, "Ooh, trophy, you are so hot!"
Or are they going, "Ooo, dead body, you smell horrible!"
I don't want to humanize the elks or anything, but I'll bet a lot of those ladies really don't want to fuck him.
Turns out, Steve Buscemi ("Garland Greene") was available for comment.
Might as well have gone for the threesome.
if they butted heads is the position showing now is impossible?
mathist/topologist to the phone please!
YouTube is full of videos where a deer has a former rival’s head entangled in his antlers. Whether it helps or hurts the buck in getting access to females if a rival’s head decorates his antlers is something only a doe could tell us — and they aren’t talking.
I would imagine he was powerful enough to rip the head off a not-decayed carcass, but I am more of the opinion WallStBlogger above posted- he got entangled with the corpse, not a live opponent.
That is a hard photo to look at.
jim - You have good taste!
It's tough to find a good taxidermist these days.
This isn't an incredibly uncommon sight. You hear about it every few years. Usually both animals die, one by having its neck broken or skull crushed/penetrated and the the other of starvation. The irony is, even though in this case the victorious animal survived, he likely missed the rut waiting for his rivals to decompose to the point where he could tear or kick the head off the neck and failed to pass on his genes.
So not necessarily survival of the fittest.
I agree with Wa St Blogger. It seems unlikely that the deer would survive if it was burdened with the corpse of another deer and had to wait for it to rot off to resume something resembling normal life. I suppose it is not impossible, but it seems improbable. To me, it seems more likely that if this occurred during a competition for females, the rival was immediately decapitated. I don't think that very likely either.
From the male deer's perspective, this is a risk worth taking. Not engaging in these competitions means never mating, and mating is the highest priority for the male deer, even above survival. (That helps explain why deer car accidents tend to increase during the rut as the males start taking risks in all things.)
That would have been a good addition to the J6 water buffalo shaman.
They would scalp their victims, cannibalize their profitable parts, and wear their viable remains as a trophy to ward of competitors, spirits, bad climate, etc.
--- Who is really free?
Didn't the minstrel tell us that some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards?
Is that a picture of Arnold or Ben?
Or maybe it's Agnes.
Carrying around someone's head for 4 months must be a bore. Someone in the Antler design department needs to be fired.
Bucks and Bulls aren't the brightest bulbs. We recently had a deer kill himself by charging through a window. He saw a "Rival" in the reflection and the result was smashed window and dead deer.
That is why the Capitol Police didn't fuck with QAnon Shaman.
"I pay in blood, but not my own"
One winner and one loser. No team sports.
Cape Buffalo are the meanest creatures of the African Big Five and are often seen wearing their victim - or parts thereof - impaled on their horns.
Static Ping said...
I only know White Tail Deer but I'm pretty sure this could happen. A male deer in rut is full to the top with male hormones and in his prime is very strong and motivated. They also don't eat a lot during the rut. While in most situations like this both animals would die if they were evenly matched, it looks like an ambitious young deer thought he would take on the big guy. The little guy lost.
Ed Gein of the Stag World.
Speaking of which: Ed Gein used to dress up in the body parts of females. Why isn't he a transgender icon?
I am Laslo.
Male animals can be very stupid during breeding season. I once had a "Tom Turkey" check me, stare me down, and was almost in attack mode, when I ventured into his territory. He wasn't going to put up with any "rival" even if he was outweighed 10 to 1.
He's doubled his dental expenses.
dress up in the body parts of females
Mommy, where do gender parts come from?
Honey, sweety, burden of mine, they appear with a big bang in the age of viability.
"He's doubled his dental expenses."
LOL.
Who is really free? Not sure that has anything to do with it. What a weird thing to say. They were both free. The one that lived won.
"With the rival's head stuck in its antlers, as if he is wearing a trophy."
Ignoring for the moment the clumsy and confusing use of pronouns (I think we can forgive Masatoshi Narayama; he's up against current American English, a language with the dumbest pronoun rules yet evolved.), we could discuss the word trophy, which turns up far too often in our conversation. It seems there's a lusted-for trophy for every month. In March, it's the NCAA Tournament and its set of diminishingly significant bits of tasteless dross.
Trophy comes to us ultimately from the Greek through the Latin trophaeum, a ceremonial display of captured enemy arms and armor erected on the battlefield by a victorious legion as a dedication to the gods, presumably to Mars and his divine attendant, Victoria. (image of a trophaeum appearing on Trajan's Column). The Romans later applied this same term to the display of enemy heads by Gallic chieftains. Ironically the Greek root, τροπή, means a rout, an ignominious defeat.
True deer (genus Cervus) shed their antlers every spring and grow a new set for the coming rutt. The sika are native to East Asia and the Indian subcontinent and vary in size like the American whitetail -- larger in colder climates, varying down to a maximum of 20kg in some island-dwelling races. The Hokkaido sika deer are among the largest. Can a 120kg deer corpse rot away over the course of a single winter? We have this photo, but we also have Photoshop.
Stags fight because the hinds prefer fight-winners to fight-losers. Females like to congratulate themselves as kindly, generous, and empathetic compared to brutal and selfish males. But human rutting isn't that much different for men as for stags.
And every year we see new videos of dogs and cats with heads stuck inside various sorts of food containers. Eating. Are none of us free of that all-consuming consumption?
True deer (genus Cervus) shed their antlers every spring and grow a new set for the coming rutt. The sika are native to East Asia and the Indian subcontinent and vary in size like the American whitetail -- larger in colder climates, varying down to a maximum of 20kg in some island-dwelling races. The Hokkaido sika deer are among the largest. Can a 120kg deer corpse rot away over the course of a single winter? We have this photo, but we also have Photoshop.
Stags fight because the hinds prefer fight-winners to fight-losers. Females like to congratulate themselves as kindly, generous, and empathetic compared to brutal and selfish males. But human rutting isn't that much different for men as for stags.
And every year we see new videos of dogs and cats with heads stuck inside various sorts of food containers. Eating. Are none of us free of that all-consuming consumption?
"You should see the other guy" was always the domain of the imagination... until now.
Who is really free?
His PTSD claim was denied because another deer friend blew the whistle, telling the government his injuries were not the result of a battle against a Russian deer in Ukraine, but over a female deer both deer were seeing. It was a love triangle gone bad.
This happens a lot more than the various and sundry luvvie types would like to admit. Nature, red in tooth and claw, donchaknow?
That smaller deer just proved his unfitness in a more disturbing way than normal.
My guess would be that they literally "locked horns", and the survivor eventually broke the other one's neck off. Desperation will do amazing things for strength and power. I've seen deer do things that you would think impossible, when frightened.
Dat buck stopped right there!
He ain’t heavy… he’s my buckbrother
Free to be
He and She
maybe
Deer should never fight with humans watching.
The deer are joining MS 13! Time to panic.
He got drunk and passed out and his friends had some fun with him.
Lesson = win or you will be someone else's trophy.
In my latest and last rehab house, I found hundreds of possum skeletons. I spend days under there with a can ventilator raking then out.
I finally found the skeleton of a huge bobcat. Wrapped around the skeleton of the biggest possum skeleton I'd ever found.
They fought to the death and died in each other's arms.
I don't romanticize nature, but in death, it can be beautiful. Much like human marriages. If you can find the beauty in the skeletons, you can move on. Or die a dignified death, I guess.
Blogger Temp Blog said...
Is that a picture of Arnold or Ben? Or maybe it's Agnes.
This is the first comment here in quite a while that's actually made me laugh.
---I don't romanticize nature, but in death, it can be beautiful. Much like human marriages.
As long as we don't fall in love with death, Tina. It seems to have a big gravitational field at times.
Post a Comment