Overview
This is a very large deer with a long tail and a lengthy coat. During the summer, the coat is red-brown with a dark dorsal stripe. During the winter, the stripe turns gray. The antlers are large and most unusual, with the main beam rising upward from the forehead, a long tine pointing backward, and many other tines growing in a fairly regular pattern. The antlers would seem useless as weapons, as there are no forward-pointing tines, but males do use them for fighting.
Taxonomy
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Mammal
- Order
- Artiodactyla
- Family
- Cervidae
- Genus
- Elaphurus
Habitat
Inhabits marshes in its native range but is adaptable to a broad array of habitats, especially with adequate cover and water. Distribution- Reintroduced to native land in China, England and continental Europe, Neuquén province in western Argentina, and Texas.
Diet
They are essentially grazers, supplementing their diet with water plants in summer.
Behavior
Père David deer are known only in captivity; however, it seems they originally may have lived in swamps and reedy marshes. Males and females are in mixed herds for half the year, but adult males form separate herds for two months before and two months after the breeding season, which begins in June in the Northern Hemisphere. During the rut, females form smaller territorial groups, and a male will join each group for a period of time and will defend it against rival males. (Males use antlers and teeth in fighting, and also rise on their hind legs and box with their front hoofs.) In a process that continues until the end of the rut, males are successively ousted from their harems and replaced by others. One or two fawns are born the following April or May. Potential life span is about 20 years.
Hunting
This deer can be hunted in a variety of regions and methods where it has been introduced.
Conservation Status
Listed as Extinct in the Wild by IUCN. Père David deer are known only in captivity, having been extinct in the wild for about 2,000 years. Captives were kept at the Imperial Hunting Park near Beijing, China, where they were first seen by Père David in 1865. The last of these deer were slaughtered during the Boxer Rebellion; however, a few had previously been shipped to Europe, and they are the source of today's world population, which includes reintroductions in China.