![]() naps or sleeping) twice a day: midday and midnight.Īccording to Hayes’s (1992) research of white-tailed deer in Arizona, deer do appear to sleep most commonly at night. Supporting the idea that deer are crepuscular, many studies like this one have found that deer have peaks in inactivity (e.g. Research shows that deer sleep throughout both the nighttime and daytime hours, while being most active at dawn and dusk. Do Deer Sleep During the Day or at Night? In other words, they show more diurnal activity than nocturnal activity, but overall, still have highest activity in dawn and dusk. Their diurnal home range is larger than their nocturnal home range, indicating that they are somewhat more active at day than night. These are the ranges of land that deer will travel on during the day. And in fact, they appear to be more active at day than night, except during the winter.ĭeer have ‘diurnal home ranges’. It’s not uncommon to come across deer during the day. This fluctuation appears to be caused by a variety of variables, including the following: These results suggest that deer responded to hunter disturbance by moving away from roads and increasing nocturnal activity.” Are Deer Diurnal?Īccording to most scholarly articles, deer are awake at least part of the day, meaning they do show some diurnal activity in addition to their crepuscular activity patterns. “During the hunting season, deer avoided clearcuts, young pine plantations (4–10 years old), and other open habitats and preferred swamp and mature pine forests, both of which provided cover. This study found that deer in hunting zones are more active at night and stick to thick shrubs to avoid hunters: “The levels of nocturnal activity were lowest in winter this might indicate the necessity to lower energy expenditure during winter nights, these being the coldest period of the year.”įurthermore, nocturnal behavior of deer increases during hunting season. Nocturnal activities during warmer months highlights how strong the impact of temperature is on deer’s sleeping patterns.Ī 2013 study in Europe supported Hayes’s findings that deer are not nocturnal in winter. Spring and Summer, where it can get extremely hot throughout the day, were the times when nocturnal activity was most common. Hayes’s study took place in the heat of Arizona and found that heat (as well as other environmental conditions) had a big impact on the deer’s behaviors. ![]() “Nocturnal activity was greatest in spring and summer, and decreased in winter.” ( Hayes, 1992, p. This means that they can be found at all times of the day, including at night.Ī study by Hayes (1992) of white-tailed deer in Arizona found that the deer in the study did exhibit some nocturnal activities in spring and summer. While most deer appear to be crepuscular, there is considerable variation in their behaviors. Nevertheless, the study did find that deer woke with the sun and were very active in the early daylight hours, supporting the near-universal consensus that deer are, generally, crepuscular. “Red deer (Cervus elaphus) also showed the lowest activity levels in winter just before sunrise, which was the coldest moment of the day.” ( Pagon et al, 2013, p. It found that in winter, deer effectively ‘sleep in’ to avoid the coldest time of the day: The one season (summer) when deer seemed to be less active after sunset was Spring, when a dry heat lingered into the evening, which led deer to exhibit some nocturnal behavior.Ī 2013 study of roe deer out of Europe also challenges the idea that deer are active just before sunrise. The hours before and after sunrise and sunset usually have low light conditions, but are bright enough for animals to still see. “My data indicate an increase in activity within the hour preceding sunrise in all seasons, and highest activity during the hour after sunset in 3 seasons.” This means they’re most active at dawn and dusk.Īccording to research conducted on Arizona white-tailed deer, Hayes (1992) found: While the behaviors of deer vary due to seasonal and environmental facts, research does tend to support the idea that deer are crepuscular.
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