Fallow deer (Dama dama)

The fallow deer (Dama dama) is a species of ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. It is native to Europe, but has been introduced around the world.

Name
The name fallow is derived from the deer's pale brown color. The Latin word dāma or damma, used for roe deer, gazelles, and antelopes, lies at the root of the modern scientific name, as well as the German Damhirsch, French daim, Dutch damhert, and Italian daino. In Croatian and Serbian, the name for the fallow deer is jelen lopatar ("shovel deer"), due to the form of its antlers. The Modern Hebrew name of the fallow deer is yachmur (יחמור).

Taxonomy
Some taxonomists include the rarer Persian fallow deer as a subspecies (D. d. mesopotamica), while others treat it as a different species (D. mesopotamica). The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was once classified as Dama virginiana and the mule deer or black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus) 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 140–160 cm (55–63 in) long, 85–95 cm (33–37 in) in shoulder height, and typically 60–100 kg (130–220 lb) in weight; does are 130–150 cm (51–59 in) long, 75–85 cm (30–33 in) in shoulder height, and 30–50 kg (66–110 lb) in weight. The largest bucks may measure 190 cm (75 in) long and weigh 150 kg (330 lb). Fawns are born in spring around 30 cm (12 in) and weigh around 4.5 kg (10 lb). 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 (and is easily confused with the sika deer).

• 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 (black): All year the coat is black, shading to greyish-brown. No light-coloured tail patch or spots are seen.
• Leucistic (white, but not albino): Fawns are cream-coloured; adults become pure white, especially in winter. Dark eyes and nose are seen. The coat has no spots.

Most herds consist of the common coat variation, yet animals of the menil coat variation are not rare. The melanistic coat variation is generally rarer, and the white coat variation is very much rarer still, although wild New Zealand herds often have a high melanistic percentage.

Only bucks have antlers, which are broad and shovel-shaped (palmate) from three years. In the first two years the antler is a single spike. They are grazing animals; 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 50 km/h (30 mph) 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 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) high and up to 5 m (16 ft) in length.

History
The fallow deer was native to most of Europe during the last interglacial. In the Pleistocene (the last ice age) the distribution was restricted to the Middle East and refugia in parts of the Mediterranean Basin: Sicily, Anatolia and the Balkan. Pleistocene fallow deer were larger, extant populations have evolved into smaller animals. Humans began to expand the distribution of this deer in the last two millennia by introducing it throughout Europe and further afield. In the Levant, fallow deer were an important source of meat in Palaeolithic cultures (420,000–200,000 BCE), as is shown by bones, also used for conserving the marrow to be eaten weeks after the kill, found in the Qesem cave, but the species appears to have disappeared from the southern Levant in the following Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture, 13,000–7,500 BCE, although gazelle and especially roe deer proliferated, perhaps because of climate change (increased aridity and the decrease of wooded areas), in combination with changing land use patterns and hunting pressure.At the same time the taxon persisted in the north in the Galilee region and the north of the West Bank.
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