Scents and Memory

One of the female deer who frequents our yard just had a fawn. She hides it away in a stand of pine trees and shrubs in our front yard during the daytime. I happened to notice it while I was mowing the lawn. She's hidden it away in the same spot a couple of days in a row. The fawn is very young, probably only a couple of days old now. It stays put for most of the day.

If a person were going to pick a strategic location to hide a fawn, he'd pick that spot. It's away from the woods, but it's covered well.

The deer either reasoned about where to put the fawn, or uses scent to make such a decision. For example, there's probably no coyote scent markings anywhere near that location.

Scent is almost like a form of memory. Humans have a weak sense of smell compared to an animal like a dog or a deer. We have a mental model of the world, while those animals probably conjure a model of the world by sniffing around.