Biology has no “cuteness” rating, but even with my science education I keep reverting to using the term to describe the assortment of wildlife babies I’m encountering in Yellowstone.
To my utter delight, today I witnessed a pronghorn and her fawn dashing across a meadow near Blacktail Deer Plateau—and cute really is the only word that does the fawn justice.
As you may recall from a prior entry, I reported that pronghorns are North America’s fastest land mammal, clocking in speeds of up to 45-50 miles an hour. Because of their quickness, once they reach adulthood predators have a difficult time catching them. Predation of young pronghorns, however, is common. Even so, nature affords some protection to the fawns—just two or three days after birth they can run at speeds of 10-20 miles per hour.
