Around 2020, stories emerged on social media of a cryptid that was being cited in the

Appalachian forests of the eastern U.S. Witnesses say they thought it was a deer at first

until it revealed itself as acting or looking like no deer they had ever seen. The contemporary legend of the not deer was born

and began migrating online.

That's coming up right now on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Sharon Hill, guest hosting for Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

The Not Deer and Weird Appalachian lore. This episode was sponsored by Jay and Carrie from Middleton, Wisconsin. To sponsor your own episode, come to sceptoid.com slash sponsor.

Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.

The white-tailed deer of North, Central, and South America is a very common large mammal.

It's so populous that it becomes a nuisance for farmers and gardeners, but also a well-known

hazard for drivers. In other words, everyone knows what this deer species looks like and generally has an idea of how it behaves.

Around 2019, descriptions of deer that did not behave as expected began to spread on the internet.

Witnesses, particularly in the eastern U.S., reported encounters with animals, that they initially observed as just another deer,

when suddenly the animals exhibited uncanny and bizarre characteristics.

These deer were seen making jerky movements, where they had out-of-proportioned body parts,

particularly the head or legs. Some were observed to be walking on their hind legs, as if their front legs were

arms. Their skin, eyes, and teeth were wrong. People reported that the deer made clicking

noises or other unnatural sounds. These encounters unnerved the witnesses, and this phenomenon

acquired the name the not deer. These stories expanded and spread on social media.

The Not Deer appeared on the Tumblr web platform in 2019

and eventually became a popular subject on TikTok and Reddit.

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