Yes I did really just say that pun. So, lets have a look into Fallow deer...
Fallow Deer (Dama Dama) got their name from their coat colour; the light brown colour, known as fallow, dates back to the year 1000 used to describe animal coats. Fallow Deer are ruminant mammals from the family Cervidae. Rumination refers to the digestion process of herbivore mammals to obtain nutrients from plant based materials. The fore-gut digestion regurgitates the fermented ingesta (or cud) to be re-chewed enabling the plant matter to break down further and stimulate digestion. Ruminants' stomachs have four chambers: Rumen (sounds like the Japanese noodle soup), Reticulum, Omasum, Abomasum. Micriobial activity takes place within the first two chambers (Rumen and Reticulum) where fermentation breaks down the complex carbohydrates. Saliva is mixed with the food and seperates it into solid and liquid. The solid food clumps together to form the cud, then as previously stated they regurgitate and re-chew that to break down the larger particles... bit grim really! This explains the constant chewing and thoughtful looks off into the distance.
There are four main variants in coat colour: common, menil, melanistic and leucistic. The leucistic coats are white, the deer is not albino, this variant is very rare.
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