The deer femur--a morphological and biomechanical animal model of the human femur.

Background: The need for continued refinement of animal models in orthopaedic studies persists despite decades of research.

Objective: This study investigates the merits of deer bone in comparison to the more commonly used pig and sheep bone as an animal model for the human femur.

Method: A morphological and biomechanical comparison of deer, pig and sheep rear femurs to those of the human femur is presented.