A white-tailed deer was found stumbling on the streets of Farragut, Tennessee, with thick hair growing from both eyeballs.
The hair came out of the discs of flesh that cover both the cornea buck – the transparent part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil.
The bizarre condition, called corneal dermoid, has only been documented in another white tail in the state of Tennessee, according to Quality white tails magazine, magazine of the National Deer Association.
A dermoid, by definition, is a type of benign tumor made up of tissues that usually appear in other parts of the body; In this case, the skin tissue completely with hair follicles cut into the cornea of the deer.
The hairy-eyed deer “can tell from the dark, but I wouldn’t think it could see where it was going,” said Sterling Daniels, a wildlife biologist at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). Quality white tails.
“I’d compare it to covering your eyes with a washcloth. You could say day and night, but that’s about it.”
The same deer has been tested positive for epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD), which can cause fever, severe swelling of the tissues and loss of fear of humans, according to Cornell Wildlife Health Lab.
This may explain why the disoriented animal wandered on a suburban street at the end of August 2020 and seemed unaware of the people nearby, Quality white tails reported.
However, the disease does not explain why deer eyes have sprouted tufts of hair.
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Hair spots were probably formed at the beginning of the animal’s development, while still in the womb, Dr. Nicole Nemeth, associate professor in the Department of Pathology of the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS) of the University Veterinarian from Georgia. school, he said Quality white tails.
Instead of successfully developing into a clear cornea, the tissue instead formed follicles in the skin and hair, covering the eyes of growing deer.
Under the thick hair, the deer’s eyes contained all the expected anatomy.
Despite being born with corneal dermoids, buck lived for more than a year and even raised his first set of horns before catching EHD, which has no treatment, Quality white tails reported.
Because the deer survived so long, Nemeth said the dermoids probably “developed gradually,” allowing the animal to adapt to its decreasing visual field over time.
“How fast [dermoids] development over time is probably not well known and can vary from case to case, “Nemeth said Quality white tails.
People can also develop dermoids in the eyes, causing hair growth on the eyeballs, Live Science also reported. The condition is rare, so an ophthalmologist can only see one or two cases in their entire career.
Not all of these dermoids cover the center of the cornea, as in the case of deer; some dermoids form at the intersection of the cornea and the white part of the eye, called the sclera.
In this case, the condition can cause blurred vision, but usually does not cause extreme vision problems, Live Science reported.
Dermoids can be removed for cosmetic reasons, but removing them usually does not improve patients’ vision.
(You can read more about the case of the hairy-eyed deer at Quality white tails magazine.)
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.