Wälder leuchten unter UV-Licht und Hirsche können es sehen. Die Studie ist die erste, die eindeutig zeigt, wie Hirsche eine Art photolumineszierendes Markierungssystem nutzen, um miteinander zu kommunizieren.

>When a predator like a lion walks through the grasslands, it makes its presence known by roaring, which can be heard miles away. Since the lion is at the top of the food chain, it doesn’t particularly require privacy. But for animals like deer, making loud sounds isn’t exactly the safest way to communicate. So, to get noticed, deer mark areas with rubs and scrapes, known as signposts. Now, a new study in Ecology and Evolution reports that these signposts hold a hidden glow, and other deer can see it.

>In the [study](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.72618) the researchers describe this hidden glow as photoluminescence, the process by which an organic object absorbs light of a short wavelength and re-emits it at a longer wavelength.

>“This study offers an interesting first look at how UV‑excited light emission might appear on deer signposts in the field,” says Jonathan Goldenberg, an ecologist at the University of Oslo, who wasn’t involved in the study.