Intersex is not confined to humans. A recent Wall Street Journal feature by Kevin Helliker described “the highlight of anything I will ever do” for North Carolina hunter Chuck Rorie: an 8-point doe. Biologists believe the incidence of intersex deer is “from one in 5,000 to far fewer than one in 10,000,” making them rarer than intersex humans, if both estimates are accurate. But life is hard when you are unusual: “Anecdotal reports suggest that antlered does are outcasts, wary of bucks and ostracized by other does, which tend to run in small packs. ‘The does were running from it, like they thought it was a buck,’ Rorie said of the antlered doe he shot.

2014 saw 4 reports of antlered does taken by hunters, one shot by a 72-year old Arkansas grandmother. (You go, girl.) Her son plans to have the entire specimen preserved as an example of gender diversity in nature. “‘It opens my eyes,” said Byrd, an Arkansas farmer. “If this can happen to an animal, I can’t see why it can’t happen to people as well.’ “