Lighting the Way

The forest may be glowing- at least to deer

- —Anirban Mukhopadhyay

AT DAWN AND DUSK, forests often appear muted and nearly monochromatic to human eyes. But white-tailed deer might see a very different landscape: to them, the forest could be aglow.

Since at least the 1970s biologists have understood that deer leave scented signposts—spots where they have rubbed their antlers on trees or urinated on scrapes that they carve out of the ground with their hooves. But one group of researchers wondered whether these marks also provide visual messages.