A white-tailed deer was found stumbling through the streets of Farragut, Tennessee, with thick hair growing out of both its eyeballs.
The hair protruded from meat slices covering both the goat’s cornea – the transparent part of the eye covering the iris and the pupil. The bizarre condition, called corneal dermoid, has been documented in just one other white tail in the state of Tennessee. according to Quality Whitetails magazine, the journal of the National Deer Association.
A dermoid is by definition a type of benign tumor arising from tissues commonly found in other parts of the body; in this case, skin tissue complete with hair follicles cut into the cornea of the deer.
The hairy eyes deer “Maybe I can see the day from the dark, but I would not think it could see where it’s going,” Sterling Daniels, a natural biologist at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), told Quality Whitetails. ‘I would compare it to covering your eyes with a washcloth. You could see it day and night, but it’s about that. ‘
The same deer have been tested positive for epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), which can cause fever, swelling of the tissue and the loss of fear of humans. according to the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab. This may explain why the disoriented animal wandered around a suburban street at the end of August 2020 and seemed unaware of the people nearby, reports Quality Whitetails.
However, the disease does not explain why the deer emerged from the deer.
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The hairy skin spots probably formed early in the development of the animal, while it was still in the womb, dr. Nicole Nemeth, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study Unit (SCWDS) of the University of Georgia Veterinarian. school, told Quality Whitetails. Instead of successfully developing into a clear cornea, the tissue rather formed skin and hair follicles, which obscured the eyes of the growing deer.
Under the thick hair, the animals’ eyes contain all the expected anatomy.
Despite being born with corneal dermoid, the goat became more than a year old and even grew his first antlers before catching EHD, which has no treatment, Quality Whitetails reports. Since the deer had survived so long, Nemeth said the dermoid probably “gradually evolved” so that the animal could adapt to its declining field of vision over time.
“How fast [dermoids] developed over time is probably not known and may vary from case to case, “Nemeth told Quality Whitetails.
People can also develop dermoid in their eyes and grow hair on their eyeballs. Live Science reported earlier. The condition is rare, so an ophthalmologist can only see one or two cases in their career. Not all of these dermoids cover the middle of the cornea as in the case of the deer; some dermoid 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 it usually does not lead to extreme vision problems, reports Live Science. The dermoid can be removed for cosmetic reasons, but its removal usually does not improve the vision of patients.
(You can read more about the case of a hairy goat on Quality Whitetails Magazine.)
Originally published on Live Science.