“Instincts Kicked In” — Mama Deer Thinks Mom’s Crying Newborn Infant Is Her Fawn

A mother may have captured a unique inter-species mom-to-mom moment that could impact the study of mammalian acknowledgment of other species' progeny.

Ann (@ann_ann_98) appears to have recorded a deer misconstruing the sound of her crying baby as a crying fawn.

Her video begins with a shot of a crying baby lying on his tummy. He's in a camouflage pajama onesie lying down on a blanket that's set on an outdoor porch.

"It's OK, it's OK," Ann says in a soothing voice as she touches the baby for comfort.

On the lawn, Ann sees something that captures her attention. A mother deer comes running up toward the sound of her baby's crying. The animal enters the area with an urgent alacrity — like Kramer busting into Seinfeld's apartment.

The TikToker quickly covers her child and scoops them up into her arms. She informs the deer that the child in her arms is hers. "Oh nope, nope, nope. This is my baby. This one's my baby," she says in an attempt to communicate with the deer.

"He's not yours," her tone then changes, "Hi Mama, say hi Mama." Her child starts to cry and Ann has to shush him several times. The video then cuts to a later time, with Ann standing in front of the deer. She appears to feed the deer off-camera when she notices another deer in her backyard.

It appears that the mother's fawn was ambling around Ann's yard. The little deer begins walking along a back exterior wall of her home until he arrives at a corner. The fawn starts to sniff the area as the TikToker continues recording its expressed curiosity.

So just how in the world did a female deer think a human baby was a member of its species?

According to a TikToker who responded to Ann's video, there are apparently striking similarities between the ways a human baby cries and a newborn fawn does.

The user wrote that they were in a very similar situation as the Mama deer. They heard what sounded like a baby crying in a field. Fearing for the worst, she ran to go and make sure the child was OK but when she got there, she was met with a little deer instead.

"Have you heard a fawn cry? Because I thought someone left their baby in a field once and went running and it was a fawn so same situation, reversed," they penned.

Others found humor in the situation, like a TikToker who pointed out the comedic expression on the deer's face after jumping onto Ann's lawn.

"She really stood there like, 'Wait if that one’s yours ... where’d I put mine?'" that TikToker said.

Another was impressed at the speed with which the mother deer responded to hearing Ann's baby's crying.

"Her mama instincts kicked in so fast," they wrote.

Another user on the app highlighted how the deer's introduction of its baby to Ann could've been interpreted as a universal facet of motherhood that is shared among different species. "I love how she brought you HER baby. As she recognized you were a mom, was like, 'Sorry for the confusion, didn’t mean to worry you. This is the potato I am dealing with,'" they wrote.

Someone else echoed this sentiment: "She's like, 'Girl I understand, mine be crying all night too. Jr, come meet the neighbors.'"

Others say that this maternal instinct is a habit that dies hard: "I heard my downstairs neighbor's newborn crying and LAUNCHED out of bed at 3 a.m. thinking it was mine. My youngest was 6."

Footage of baby fawns calling out for their mothers online also helps to reinforce the idea that the high-pitched crying of a fawn can easily be misconstrued by a deer as one of its babies or vice versa.

Take a listen below for yourself.

What do you think? Does Ann's baby in the video really sound close enough to a fawn? So much so that it would cause its mother to come crashing into her backyard? Or do you think deer need to clean their ears out while they study how to get run over by cars less?