Caribou, Deer, Elk & Moose - Sounds Wild
Deer Eat Poison

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Deer eat Poison

A Sitka black-tailed deer is browsing in an alpine meadow on a summer day. The young buck bends to nip the green, heart-shaped leaves off a low-growing plant called maianthemum, then ambled over to a tall spiky plant with white flowers. It's veratrum, a poisonous plant also known as false hellebore or corn lily.

Why would deer eat a toxic plant, and how do they survive? Wildlife Biologist tom Hanley has studied deer nutrition and he said he's amazed at what deer eat. And not just poisonous plants- he's watched deer chow down on the thorny leaves of devil's club with any apparent ill- effect.

Deer thrive on a mixed diet, and will eat a little bit of a wide variety of plants that are available to them. The combination of plants in the digestive tract may minimize the toxic effects of some of the foods. There are threshold levels for toxicity, and as long as deer stay below that threshold, they're okay. They also eat the less toxic parts of the plant. Toxicity varies in different parts of plants, and in false hellebore, the flowers are far less toxic than the roots.

Deer have bacteria in their stomachs that help them digest the food they eat. Small quantities of toxins help these microbes adapt, and over time the deer's digestive system is able to tolerate limited quantities of the toxins in their diet. Deer also eat clay and lick minerals from the soil that tend to buffer or bind to some toxins and counteract the effects.