Père David's Deer
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Père David's deer (Elaphurus davidianus, other names: Cerf du Père David( fr), Ciervo del Padre David (es), and Milu in Chinese (麋鹿)), is a species of deer known only in captivity. It prefers marshland, and is believed to be native to the subtropics. It grazes on a mixture of grass and water plants.
Adults weigh 150-200 kg (330-440 pounds). They have a nine-month gestation period, and one or two fawns are born at a time. They reach maturity at about 14 months, and have been known to reach the age of 23 years.
Père David's deer has a long tail, wide hooves, and branched antlers. Adults have summer coats that are bright red with a dark dorsal stripe, and dark gray winter coats. The fawns are spotted.
Besides the Chinese official name Milu (麋鹿), a Chinese nickname name (四不象, pinyin: sì bú xiàng) translates as "four unlikes," because the animals were seen as having the horns of a stag, the neck of a camel, the foot of a cow, and the tail of an ass. By this name, this undomesticated animal entered Chinese mythology as the mount of Jiang Ziya in the Ming novel Fengshen Yanyi, or Investiture of the Gods.
These animals were first made known to Western science in the 19th century, by Father Armand David, a French missionary working in China. At the time, the only surviving herd was in a preserve belonging to the Chinese emperor. The last herd of Père David's deer that remained in China were eaten by Western and Japanese troops that were present at the time of the Boxer Rebellion.
After Father David publicized their existence, a few animals were given to European countries, and bred there. After the remaining population in China died out, the remaining deer in Europe were gathered to England to be bred for the preservation of the species. The current population stems from this herd.
These deer are now found in zoos around the world, and two herds of Père David's deer were reintroduced to Nan Haizi Milu Park, Beijing and Dafeng Reserve, Jiangsu Province, China in the late 1980s. They are classified as "critically endangered" in the wild, but do not appear to have suffered from a genetic bottleneck because of small population size, apparently because their population had been much reduced for a long time already which eliminated harmful allele combinations.
References
- Deer Specialist Group (1996). [Elaphurus davidianus]. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 06 May 2006. Listed as Critically Endangered (CR D v2.3)
External links
- ARKive - [images and movies of the Pere David’s deer (Elaphurus davidianus)]
- [Pere David's Deer facts and photo]
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