Автор: Олени, неизменно вызывающие умиление у ничего не понимающий публики, в действительности являются самыми беспощадными гладиаторами, когда вопрос встает о первенстве за самку.
This shocking scene looks like it’s straight out of a horror movie — a deer has mysteriously ended up with THE SEVERED HEAD of another deer lodged in its antlers.
It was spotted on a trail cam planted in the wilds of North Dakota.
Local resident Jim Brown had seen the two bucks on his trail camera near Walhalla.
But then they vanished until this fateful day in December when the camera snapped this terrifying image.
The shot has only just emerged after the Walhalla contractor went back to the camera set up on a popular wildlife trail to see what had been captured on its memory card.
The stomach churning horror turned out to show the antlers and severed head hanging from the antler rack of the living buck.
Jim said: «I believe I had both of those bucks alive in an earlier picture.
«Then all of a sudden that one, that’s how he showed up. I didn’t see him as he was dragging the body around. I only ever saw him with what was left of the other one.»
He said the buck remained in the area for a couple weeks, all the time with the severed head of its sparring foe tangled in its antlers.
Jim added: «He didn’t look very good. On the pictures, he looked skinny, and I’m sure he wasn’t eating very well. And then we got the cold temperatures, and nobody saw him again after that. I’m sure he probably died.»
Speculating on how it happened, Jim said: «My guess he ripped it off. I can’t imagine the coyotes got him and not the one that was alive because they’ll take down a full deer no problem. Especially if he was stressed out like that.
«I personally think he just broke the head off himself, but who knows?»
Bill Jensen, a big game biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Bismarck, added to the Duluth News Tribune: «Once his physical condition deteriorates he will drop his antlers and be rid of the other head.»
ends
Во время гона, соперники сталкиваются лбами, их рога переплетаются и не факт, что после такой схватки оба самца остаются в живых.
Американец Джим Браун сделал редкий снимок победителя, но выразил сомнения, что с таким грузом на шее олень сможет выжить.
Биологист Бил Дженсен из Северной Дакоты придерживается иного мнения. Многолетний опыт, полученный им в штате Департамента природных ресурсов в Бисмарке, когда довелось фиксировать совершенно необычные случаи поведения оленей, дает основание сообщить репортерам Duluth News Tribune: когда олень поправится, он скинет свои старые рога, а с этим окончательно избавится от соперника.
Репортеры сомневаются и добавляют, — «конечно, если оленя не сожрут койоты».