It seems super backwards that a deer would run away from the sound of a twig snapping but hurl itself in front of a large metal machine? I had just watched a video where it happened and it really does look like the deer purposely jumped into the vehicle as it was passing
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A deer hit my car a few months ago. I read it was because they can’t really tell what direction the car is coming from, and they don’t know that road = cars coming, they just know that there’s no food there. So then they think they’re running from a predator that’s right behind them or something when they really are on the road beside them
They’re dazed and confused. Literally.
Deer eyes are *very* sensitive to light. Headlights are bright enough that for a deer, it’s similar to getting hit with a flashbang grenade. Some deer will freeze in place when that happens to them; others will try to ‘flee’ from the lights, but unfortunately for them, they’re not well-adapted to cars.
When deer flee, they take advantage of their agility by choosing a random direction and quickly bolting in that direction. This works relatively well against their normal predators, but not very well against cars, which move significantly faster than deer and are not even trying to hunt them. The ‘strategy’ of bounding in a random direction sometimes lands them directly in front of the car, where they are quickly struck and killed.
I am reminded of a story a coworker told me. He grew up on a dairy farm. In the area where he lived were a lot of farms with a lot of cows. He observed, quite often, when a cow is standing on the side of a road, or ambling slowly toward the side of the road, contemplating crossing it, the cow somehow thinks that the road would be un-crossable if a car passes by. So the cow, seeing an approaching car, waits indecisively until the last second, then jumps into the road to cross it, and may get killed.
My coworker said he and everyone else in the area learned to slow down when passing cows because of their penchant for jumping in front of cars.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I propose that a similar situation may exist for deer. The deer is considering crossing the road but gets the thought in its head that it absolutely must cross before the car goes by.
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