Odd Deer Herd

[MTLabrador]

Mule deer white tail crossbreds are known as blacktail deer and hardly rare. A seperate species now. Genetically proven fact. In the top photo I see 2 mulies and 2 blacktails.

You’re saying that Sitka blacktails and Columbia blacktails are current mule deer/whitetail hybrids? I’m familiar with Geist’s theory of mule deer evolution, but that is that the much more recently evolved modern mule deer may have been a result of hybridization between coastal blacktails and whitetails.

Species evolving over time is much more complicated than mule deer + whitetail = blacktail.

 

[Deleted member 20812]

Two forms of black-tailed deer or blacktail deer that occupy coastal woodlands in the Pacific Northwest of North America are subspecies of the mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). They have sometimes been treated as a species, but virtually all recent authorities maintain they are subspecies.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The Columbian black-tailed deer (O. h. columbianus) is found in western North America, from Northern California into the Pacific Northwest of the United States and coastal British Columbia in Canada.[8] The Sitka deer (O. h. sitkensis) is found coastally in British Columbia, southeast Alaska, and southcentral Alaska (as far as Kodiak Island).[8][9][10][11]

 

[Tiredofthebickering]

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The blacktail topic comes up on this podcast. They discuss the recent genetic findings which are leading some to believe that blacktail are separate and original instead of mule deer. Pretty interesting (hope I remembered it correctly lol)

 

[kwyeewyk]

Here's a link to the article I mentioned, it's a deep dive but I think it's one of the better that I've found for explaining what's really going on with hybrids:

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It say an error but the link still works.

 

[Bluffgruff]

The deer in the original picture looks like a regular mule deer with a common variant of tail coloring.

Genetically, genus Odocoileus likely was isolated on west and east coasts and southern glacial refugia south of the continental ice sheets during recent glaciation events, leading to blacktails on the west coast and whitetails on the east coast, and mule deer in the southern ice free areas.

I've read some molecular genetic papers that suggest blacktails are a separate species from whitetails, and that mule deer are likely a 3rd species, lumped in with blacktails based on morphology, not genetics, and are not the basal species.

 

[D4570]

The deer in the picture looks nothing like a whitetail to me all the necks are the same length. The whitetail I have seen look like Gerraffts compared to mule deer. They feed together a lot here and there is no mistaking them.
We have true crosses here sometimes and they look more like a mule deer with a long neck.
They seem to be sterile and the ones I have shot have both testes and mammary glands. Their horns always seem to be well deformed. JUST in my untrained eye!