Mother Deer Respond to the Cries of Other Animal Babies According to researchers, female mule and white-tailed deer will respond to the cries of babies outside of their species—including domestic cats and dogs, sea lions, and human babies—if the distress calls fall within the same frequency of young deer.Researchers Susan Lingle of the University of Winnipeg and Tobias Riede of Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona, conducted a series of experiments to see how mother deer would react to hearing distress calls of various mammals.