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A white-tailed deer was found stumbling through the streets of Farragut, Tennessee, with thick hair growing out of its two eyeballs.
The hair protruded from discs of flesh covering both the cornea of the deer – the transparent part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil.
The bizarre condition, called corneal dermoids, has been documented in just one other whitetail in the state of Tennessee, according to Quality Whitetails magazine, the journal of the National Deer Association.
A dermoid, by definition, is a type of benign tumor made up of tissue that usually appears in other parts of the body; in this case, complete skin tissue with hair follicles arose in the cornea of the deer.
The hairy-eyed deer “might be able to distinguish the day from the dark, but I don’t think it would be able to see where it was going,” said Sterling Daniels, a wildlife biologist at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. (TWRA). Quality Whitetails.
“I would compare it to covering your eyes with a washcloth. You could say day to night, but that’s about it.
The same deer tested positive for epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), which can cause fever, severe tissue swelling and loss of fear in humans, according to the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab.
This may explain why the disoriented animal wandered down a suburban street in late August 2020 and seemed unaware of people nearby, Quality Whitetails reported.
However, the disease does not explain why the deer’s eyes grew tufts of hair.
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The patches of hairy skin probably formed early in the animal’s development, while it was still in the uterus, Dr. Nicole Nemeth, associate professor in the pathology department of the Disease Study Unit University of Georgia Veterinary School’s Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife (SCWDS) says Quality Whitetails.
Rather than successfully developing into a clear cornea, the tissue instead formed skin and hair follicles, obscuring the eyes of the growing deer.
Beneath the thick hair, the deer’s eyes contained all of the expected anatomy.
Although he was born with corneal dermoids, the deer had lived to be over a year and even grew their first set of antlers before catching EHD, which went untreated. Quality Whitetails reported.
Since the deer have survived for so long, Nemeth said the dermoids “probably grew gradually”, allowing the animal to adjust to its diminishing field of vision over time.
“How fast [dermoids] developing over time is probably not well known and may vary from case to case, ”said Nemeth Quality Whitetails.
Humans can also develop dermoids in their eyes, which causes hairs to grow on their eyeballs, Live Science reported. The condition is rare, so an ophthalmologist may only see one or two cases in their entire career.
All these dermoids do not cover the center of the cornea, as in the case of the deer; some dermaids 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 does not usually cause extreme vision problems, Live Science reported.
Dermaids can be removed for cosmetic reasons, but their removal usually does not improve patients’ eyesight.
(You can read more about the case of the hairy-eyed deer at Quality Whitetails magazine.)
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
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