Père Davids deer

Appearance

The adult Père David's deer reaches a head-and-body length of up to 1.9–2.2 meters and stands about 1.2 meters tall at the shoulder. The tail is relatively long for a deer, measuring 50–66 centimeters when straightened. Weight is between 135 and 200 kilograms. 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 in length, with a dark tuft at the end. The hooves are large and spreading, and make clicking sounds 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 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 ancestral predators, 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.

Naming

This species of deer was first made known to Western science in 1866 by Armand 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 Milne-Edwards, a French biologist.

The species is sometimes nicknamed "sibuxiang", 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 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", a Chinese classical work of fiction written during the Ming Dynasty.

Distribution

In neolithic times, the range of the "milus range extended across much of China Proper. Archaeologists have found "milu" antlers at settlements from the Liao River in the north to Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province and across the Yellow and Yangtze River Basins in Shaanxi and Hunan Province.

Cultural

According to Chinese legend, when the tyrant King Zhou of Shang ruled the land more than 4,000 years ago, a horse, a donkey, an ox and a deer went into a cave deep in the forest to meditate and on the day the King executed his virtuous minister Bigan, the animals awoke from their meditation and turned into humans. They entered society, learned of the King's heinous acts and wanted to take recourse against the King, who was powerful. So they transformed themselves into one creature that combined the speed of the horse, the strength of the ox, the donkey's keen sense of direction and the nimble agility of the deer. This new animal then galloped to the Kunlun Mountains to seek the advice of the Primeval Lord of Heaven. The Lord was astonished at the sight of a creature that had antlers of a deer, hooves of an ox, face of deer and tail of a donkey. "It's unlike any of four creatures!" he exclaimed. Upon learning of the animal's quest, Lord gave his blessing and dispatched the creature to his disciple the sage Jiang Ziya, who was battling the King. Jiang Ziya rode the creature to victory over the King and helped found the Zhou Dynasty. After fulfilling its vow, the "milu" settled in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The animal became a symbol of good fortune and was sought by later emperors who believed eating the meat of the milu would lead to everlasting life. By the Han Dynasty, about 2,000 years ago, the "milu" was already extinct in the wild, but kept in imperial hunting grounds.