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Oh yeah, large adult does can be very aggressive. I had one challenge me in an open field, she was with her fawns, and she let them run into the nearby cover as she stamped and snorted at me, very aggressively. She then ran to the far end of the field, turned and snorted at me, and ran to the far edge of the woods, and snorted at me again. She was obviously trying to distract me away from her fawns. I often wondered what she would have done if I followed her fawn into the cover.
Oh yeah, large adult does can be very aggressive. I had one challenge me in an open field, she was with her fawns, and she let them run into the nearby cover as she stamped and snorted at me, very aggressively. She then ran to the far end of the field, turned and snorted at me, and ran to the far edge of the woods, and snorted at me again. She was obviously trying to distract me away from her fawns. I often wondered what she would have done if I followed her fawn into the cover.
With nature the doe are more important than the fawns. Even with fawns close I have never been challenged by a doe. Yes they snort and will play 'stompy' foot with you; but they usually do not come closer. They snot at me and I snort back, they stomp and I stomp back. It is interesting to see their reaction. Usually they will play for a while and then start walking away with a robotic motion. It is almost like telling others that something isn't right with that man!
The stomp foot probably tells their fawns of possible danger or stay hidden. But they will do that even when they don't have fawns. In that case it could be to warn other deer.
I have never been attacked by a deer. I have worked around horses and cows when I was younger. I have also wrestled deer on two occasions where they were supposed to be dead but they still had a lot of life. Deer are very strong animals for their size. Even though I have never been attacked; I respect them and always try to remember that they are wild and we cannot always predict their next move.
Do wild animals recognize their relatives if they run into each other?
Do animals lets say solitary ones like bears ever visit their mothers? Will the papa bear know who his own cubs are so he does not end up eating them like he would to other cubs?
During mating season, will the relatives know each other and avoid mating each other?
Not in my experience and neither do domestic animals. The best example I can cite of this lack of recognition of bloodline is the Western herds of wild horses. They inbreed quite enthusiastically and it shows. Horse herds out here are getting pretty pathetic due to gross mismanagement or complete lack thereof.
I have some serious disagreement with the wild horse advocacy groups being a horseman myself. In yonder days ranchers who had horse herds on their land would cull them regularly and every couple years they would actually turn out new mares , shoot the old stud and turn out a new one. Subsequently these herds were kept healthy and worth having around as a source of good remounts. Left to their own devices as the advocacy groups would have it they inbreed badly and herd health declines.
Animals do not have any sense of "family" when it comes to mating. Inbreeding with wild herd animals is pretty unavoidable. Predators are somewhat different as offspring usually leave their mothers and stake their own territories. Such is the case with mountain lions. But it still happens with all wild animals.
How does a lion know he fathered the cubs? I suspect he smells it. I have ZERO backup on this idea but am intrigued as we filter tens of thousands of scents into our brain without realizing it, as per British "smell studies".
We "process" all kinds of chemicals without being conscious about their impact. I intrigued as it's a survival skill. Any time I haven't paid attention to my personal signals i.e. "just don't like that person but don't know why", I've usually paid the price.
A male lion has a territory which he defends from other males. He breeds with and protects females within that territory. Any cubs born within that territory and from those females are his. They can't be anyone else's.
When a male lion invades and conquers another's territory the first thing he'll do is find any cubs and kill them because he knows they are not his. Once the existing cubs are killed, he starts fresh with only his cubs being produced.
As part of the mating ritual, squirrels supposedly have a "kiss" shortly before they decide to proceed or not and that is to tell if they are too closely related. So, it's not exactly a romantic kiss but they do take a good sniff for a specific purpose! Of course that's all just conjecture but it's based on a scientific theory.
Just because one of those animals avoids breeding with a relative... do they 'know' it's a relative or do they simply adhere to a biologic aversion to mating with that other one not knowing the reason why?
An interesting study was done with H.sapiens 30 y/a or so: Something like 10 men were asked to work up a sweat and it was collected in vials and then the vials were presented to 10 women to be sniffed and "rated" as to offensiveness. All 20 people involved had blood samples examined for HLA typing (the genetic typing in the "old days")
It turns out that the samples rated as offensive were the cases where the HLA types of the male & female were very similar, while those from very dissimilar HLA types were more often rated as "neutral."
It would be an evolutionary advantage to mate dissimilar genetics types rather than similar ones.
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