Lacy, an all-white white-tailed deer, had just birthed a spotted brown fawn when YouTube user shadowvalleydeerfarm began taking video. For a few minutes, she worked quietly to clean the baby; then a second fawn arrived, as white as his mother!
Well, not at first. The white fawn looks rather golden at first, but Lacy soon has him cleaned up, too. In another June 2013 video taken within an hour of their birth, both fawns can be seen frolicking around their mother, learning how to walk and be brothers.
Many does have twin fawns, but it might seem strange to have one that is brown and one that is white — shouldn’t twins look alike? Not necessarily, says this article from Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. Female deer ovulate multiple eggs at once, so most sets of twin fawns are of the fraternal variety, not identical. The article points out that up to one-fourth of all twin fawns aren’t twins at all, but half siblings, sired by different fathers.
Of course, Lacy didn’t care about any of that. She had a family to take care of.
