Why are the antlers on a deer crossing sign backwards?
The deer on the sign is depicted in silhouette–a two-dimensional drawing. It wouldn’t show anything like curving antlers. So if the deer had antlers that maybe curved around the head … wouldn’t they show up as backwards on a sign? On this hunch, I checked an encyclopedia that had pictures of deer … and bingo! The deer you see on the traffic sign is one of the most common deer in North America–the white-tailed deer. This picture from the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia isn’t the one I was looking at, but it does show that the antlers thrust forward. There’s a better illustration in the online Encyclopedia Britannica (www.eb.com), but that’s a subscription service so I can’t give you a direct link. Trust me, though–it’s a photo of a white-tailed that closely resembles the deer on the sign, antlers and all.
