{"id":228669,"date":"2022-03-31T20:23:03","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T20:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/video-wildlife-biologists-spot-rarest-of-rare-melanistic-mule-deer-in-west-texas"},"modified":"2022-03-31T20:23:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T20:23:03","slug":"video-wildlife-biologists-spot-rarest-of-rare-melanistic-mule-deer-in-west-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/video-wildlife-biologists-spot-rarest-of-rare-melanistic-mule-deer-in-west-texas","title":{"rendered":"Video: Wildlife Biologists Spot &#8220;Rarest of Rare&#8221; Melanistic Mule Deer in West Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wildlife biologists with Texas Parks and Wildlife spotted a melanistic mule deer in West Texas. TPWD \/ FacebookBiologists with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spotted a melanistic mule deer earlier this week while conducting a wildlife survey in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas. They were able to capture video footage of the black-haired fawn from a helicopter, and the department shared the footage to Facebook on Tuesday.According to TPWD, &#8220;melanism is a rare, random genetic anomaly believed to be caused by mutations in the melanicortin 1 receptor gene (MC1R), which leads to an overproduction of the pigment melanin.&#8221; Other genetic mutations that affect the pigmentation of deer include albinism and piebaldism, but the agency explained that melanistic deer are much rarer than albinos and piebalds, and it called the all-black muley that was recently spotted the &#8220;rarest of the rare.&#8221;Deer biologists have studied these genetic mutations over the years, and research shows that piebald deer are the most<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biologists with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spotted a melanistic mule deer earlier this week while conducting a wildlife survey in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas. They were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,351],"class_list":["post-228669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}