Stinky is one of our five Pere David’s deer. Here’s pretty much everything you ever needed to know about a Pere David’s.
Père David’s deer, also known as the milu in China , is a species of deer that is currently extinct in the wild—all known specimens are found only in captivity. This semiquatic animal prefers marshland, and is native to the subtropics of China. It grazes mainly on grass and aquatic plants. It is the only extant member of the genus Elaphurus. Based on genetic comparisons, Père David’s deer is closely related to the deer of the genus Cervus, leading many experts to suggesting merging Elaphurus into Cervus or demoting Elaphurus to a subgenus of Cervus.
This species of deer was first made known to Western science in 1866 by Armand David (Père David), a French missionary working in China. He obtained the carcasses of an adult male, an adult female and a young male, and sent them to Paris, where the species was named Père David’s Deer by Alphonse Mine-Edwards, a French biologist.
The species is sometimes nicknamed sibuxiang in Chinese, literally meaning “four not alike”, which could mean “the four unlikes” or “like none of the four”; it is variously said that the four are cow, deer, donkey, horse (or) camel, and that the expression means in detail:
- “the hooves of a cow but not a cow, the neck of a camel but not a camel, antlers of a deer but not a deer, the tail of a donkey but not a donkey.”
- “the nose of a cow but not a cow, the antlers of a deer but not a deer, the body of a donkey but not a donkey, tail of a horse but not a horse”
- “the tail of a donkey, the head of a horse, the hoofs of a cow, the antlers of a deer”
- “the neck of a camel, the hoofs of a cow, the tail of a donkey, the antlers of a deer”
- “the antlers of a deer, the head of a horse and the body of a cow”
By this name, this undomesticated animal entered Chinese mythology as the mount of Jiang Ziya in Fengshen Bang (translated as Investiture of the Gods), a Chinese classical fiction written during the Ming Dynasty.
The adult Père David’s deer reaches a head-and-body length of up to 1.9–2.2 meters (6.2–7.2 ft) and stands about 1.2 meters (3.9 ft) tall at the shoulder. The tail is relatively long for a deer, measuring 50–66 centimeters (20–26 in) when straightened. Weight is between 135 and 200 kilograms (300 and 440 lb). The head is long and slender with large eyes, very large preorbital glands, a naked nose pad and small, pointed ears.
The branched antlers are unique in that the long tines point backward, while the main beam extends almost directly upward. There may be two pairs per year. The summer antlers are the larger set, and are dropped in November, after the summer rut. The second set—if they appear—are fully grown by January, and fall off a few weeks later.
The coat is reddish tan in the summer, changing to a dull gray in the winter. Long wavy guard hairs are present on the outer coat throughout the year, with the coat becoming woolier in winter. There is a mane on the neck and throat and a black dorsal stripe running along the cervicothoracic spine. The tail is about 50 centimeters (20 in) in length, with a dark tuft at the end. The hooves are large and spreading, and make clicking sounds (as in the reindeer) when the animal is moving.
The gestation period is about nine months, after which a single offspring is usually born; twins are born in rare cases. The juveniles (referred to as either fawns or a calves) have a spotted coat, as is commonly seen in most species of deer. They reach sexual maturity at about 14 months. Historically, their main predators are believed to have been tigers and leopards. Despite no longer encountering natural predator, when experimentally exposed to images and stimuli relating to these big cats, the deer seemed to instinctively react with a cautious predator response typical of wild deer.
A semiaquatic animal, Père David’s deer swims well, spending long periods standing in water up to its shoulders. Although predominantly a grazer, the deer supplements its grass diet with aquatic plants in the summer.