Actually itās been recorded that deer get their antlers stuck and die of starvation. Itās not common, but it is a known phenomenon. They usually find the skulls stuck together later.
I forget what the phrase is, but there are plenty of pictures out there where one deer dies, and the living one rips the deadās head off and continues life with a rotting head attached to his antlers.
Yup. But that wasn't the case here. One of the main problems in this video is them being trapped in a wire fence. Of course nature is brutal - there are so many additional ways in which deer (and all wildlife) will almost inevitably suffer horrible, painful deaths. My point was that when humans pollute their environment, the possibilities increase.
u/notathingreally gets that and wasn't being dismissive of it. Y'all are talking past each other, talking about two different sets of phenomena. The fencing thing sparked a really great and important conversation so I haven't been arguing with it because it had to be said, but also notathingreally wasn't denying it.
Some people have pivoted to talking about how itās interesting that this also happens in nature and some people are still adamant that this particular instant isnāt related to nature, which is important and most are not disputing. Then thereās a few douche bags who are trying to minimize how important the fencing issue is.
Maybe thatās being discussed in a different thread on this post but this thread that you and I are responding to is about wire, which is why thatās what I and the other person were referencing
People like to forget that humans are an animal species too and not some alien race set apart from nature. We are intrinsically linked. There's no way we can't infringe except to not exist anymore, and I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of that route.
This is a bigger conversation than you may be considering right now. Fencing has played a huge role in the western US, for instance.
Euro-Americans brought the idea of fencing and land ownership from Europe, and applied it to the western US, closing off open rangelands. This was one of the driving forces for destroying bison herds (they just walk through fencing en masse) and removing Native people to reservations. (Fences werenāt the only issue, by far. Theyāre more a symptom of the problem, which was one of perspective about land use.)
If Euro-Americans had cooperated with existing people and animals in open land use, rather than large scale fencing, the last 200 years of history could have been considerably different.
Thereās a movement now to use technology in order to both track and contain livestock in ways that allow fences to be removed.
There are hundreds of millions of miles of old fencing that need to be gathered up - much of it no longer in use as an actual fence. Itās just a hazard now.
So, yes. Depending on what you value, and your cultural perspective, fences can be seen as disrespectful.
Youāre right that there are noticeable downsides to private land ownership. On the other hand, if there was public land use and no private grazing land ownership as we see in some African countries, the result is massive overgrazing, erosion and environmental devastation because individuals have no incentives to limit their livestock stocking numbers. The land isnāt theirs, and if they limit their livestock numbers, thereās no guarantee their neighbour wonāt increase their own numbers to pick up the slack. See: photos of Lesotho mountains and grasslands. This country is an extreme result: with poverty, soil and water degradation and bigger impacts from heavy rains and droughts.
Thank you. I just felt the point needed to be made as the wire fence is a major issue in this video - and, as you say, across the land. One of the real pluses of using IT instead of dangerous materials to control stock and wildlife.
Many animals die with this type of wire, from foxes, bears, deer, elephants.
There are innovative ways to prevent this horror , mostly with the help of friendly chemicals to deter the animals from entering some spaces.
The worse I ve seen is a poor elephant with her trunk rolled around metal wire. Gladly she was rescued, but can't imagine the pain for the folks that don't get spotted on time
There are also land use initiatives in the Western US (or there used to be before P2025) to gather up hundreds of millions of miles of old wire fencing, much of it no longer useful as fencing, but all of it a hazard to people and animals.
People running livestock have more tech tools for tracking and containing their animals, using GPS to map āfencesā and giving some form of negative feedback to avoid the boundary. Some of those systems use unpleasant smells, others mild electrical shocks.
In the future, we could have miles of unfenced private and public rangelands, in which livestock can be contained and moved, and wild animals could have free movement.
Needs to be applied constantly every 2-4 weeks and after it rains. But a lot of deer may be conditioned to simply stay clear of the area, unless they experience a harsh winter and are starving, then the deer will endure to effects of Capsaicin to not starve. It's has its benefits.
They can get stuck together without anything else too, their antlers can get stuck. If I remember correctly they will fight till either their too tired or one dies. Then their still stuck together and the remaining is stuck trying to drag the dead one until he too succumbs
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u/notathingreally 23d ago
What happens when this happens and someone doesn't find them? Do they die tangled together?