why a deer freezes in the headlights?
In: Biology
They haven’t evolved to understand cars, and their reaction time is not fast enough to make a decision, if you are driving on a fast road, any animal or even person would react the same way, if you have less than a second from seeing the car to thinking where to jump out the way, humans just have the advantage of understanding the noise of a car before we see it.
Similar reason a rabbit will try to outrun the car running straight into front of you rather than simply move to the side out of the way; in nature a predator would catch them if they jumped to the side,
Deer are evolved to deal with predators, not cars. When they spot a car it is quite far away for a predator and so holding still to hide would tend to be effective. So they are standing there trying to figure out what they are looking at, if it is a threat and even seen them, when suddenly it has barreled down on them faster than any predator they have adapted to.
Also keep in mind that automobiles don’t show movement like animals do. If a wolf is sprinting at you the legs will be pounding, the shoulders and hind quarters bobbing, in general looking very different to if it is just standing there.
In contrast deer likely have plenty of time to observe automobiles at night when deer are out feeding. Parked automobiles that is; they spend hours on end without moving at all. When they move though it is faster than any ground animal and the spinning of wheels is minor and doesn’t change their silhouette. Headlights and other signal lights are similarly unexpected by deer as no animal emits such things.
So a deer might think something like this:
“Is that a quiet growl in the distance? Freeze, what could it be? Weird, is that a pond reflecting the moon over there? It is way off by one of those boxy rock things, maybe the growling is from behind it? Well it is a long way off so… no wait, it is right up on me now?! Ahhh!!” Bonk!
They are blind.
Their eyes are trying to take in as much light as possible at night and when the headlights hit them, they can’t see a thing so they freeze until their vision comes back or the truck slams into them.
Many preditors don’t chase things that don’t move. If you run the wolves have to chase you, its just what they do, if you freeze they might ignore you. Problem is, what works on wolves does not work on suv’s
It’s the fight or flight instinct. They just get caught up in figuring out which one they want to do.
Because deer don’t have the context or intelligence necessary to discern what the hell those headlights are. They’re mesmerized by them, and don’t associate them with danger in any fashion. Being able to recognize and respond to automobiles was never evolutionarily selected for so the instinct or capacity simply doesn’t exist in the species.
The deer are literally blinded. They’re not evolved to deal with bright lights coming at them at night. There is no depth perception at night, especially for a deer Whos eyes are on the side of its head. So the deer can’t see the car, only the blinding lights, and doesn’t actually know for sure the lights are coming towards him. Next, they can’t comprehend the high speed. They aren’t used to seeing any animal run 60-80 miles per hr.
Latest Answers