All the World's Deer: A History of the Deer Family

Megaloceros

Over the past year, I have described no less than 53 living species of deer, seven of which are currently considered endangered and one of which, bar a few park escapes, exists only in captivity. And that's excluding Schomburgk's deer which. as I noted, probably went extinct in 1938, and certainly didn't last long beyond that if it didn't. It's the only known species of deer to have gone extinct for centuries, although it might not be the last to do so. But there are, unsurprisingly, given their large size and distinctive features, a great number of extinct fossil species of deer that we know about.

Further along in this blog I have posted a summary of the family tree of the living species of deer. This is derived from molecular and genetic studies, but it turns out to map reasonably well to what we would have guessed purely from looking at the animals and their skeletons, which is good news if we want to try and place fossil deer into it. The first thing that's apparent from the tree is that, as predicted back in the 19th century, there is a deep split within it, representing the two subfamilies: the cervines (at the top in the diagram) and the capreolines.

All the World's Deer: The Largest Deer and Other Oddities

Moose

It will probably come as no surprise that the largest species of deer alive today is the moose (Alces alces), confusingly known as the "elk" in some parts of Europe. The latter is, of course, the original English name for the animal, and remains, more or less, the name for it in languages such as German and Swedish today. The word "moose" comes from one or more of the Algonquian languages and entered English no later than the 17th century, although why Europeans chose to rename the animal they already knew about rather than come up with a new name for the novel American beast that looked like a red deer is unclear.

At any rate, moose are undeniably large, considerably larger than the American elk. They typically stand around 200 cm (6' 6") at the shoulder, with females not much shorter than males. The males are, however, significantly bulkier and more muscular, with a full-grown bull typically weighing between 300 and 600 kg (660 to 1300 lbs) and females around 25% less. The occasional exceptional individual can, of course, be much larger than this but, even ignoring those, that's pretty big for a deer.

All the World's Deer: Small Deer of South America

Grey brocket

Deer first entered South America when that continent first connected with its northern counterpart a little over two million years ago. Finding nothing similar already there, they rapidly diversified into several distinct species, taking advantage of a wide range of different habitats. Many of the resulting species were medium to large animals, resembling their northern relatives, such as white-tailed and mule deer. But others instead took on a role closer to the muntjacs of eastern Asia. 

How many species of these small South American deer are truly distinct is a question that is not fully settled yet. In common with the scientific fashions of the time, a great many species were named in the 19th century, only to be merged in the 20th and then split apart again in the 21st (not always along the same lines, of course). As a result, many of the species we recognise today weren't considered such until recently and have not been individually studied to any great extent beyond demonstrating that they exist. On the other hand, the reason that we confused them for so long - and still aren't entirely sure how many they are - is that they are all quite similar. This is especially true of the various kinds of brocket, all of which are currently placed in the genus Mazama.

All the World's Deer: Muntjacs

Red muntjac

For many people, the word 'deer' likely conjures up a medium to large animal with large branching antlers in the males. This fits the description of not only red deer and fallow deer in Europe and white-tailed deer in America, but also many species less familiar to those of us in the West, such as barasingha, sambar, and huemul. But there are a number of animals much smaller than these that are nonetheless indisputably deer. The smallest species of deer in Europe is the roe deer, but even smaller species live further east, most of which are collectively described as muntjacs or "barking deer".

Muntjacs were first scientifically described in 1780, from a specimen collected in Java. Muntjacs, of course, live much further afield than this, and, over the years, some of those living elsewhere were split off and given their own species names. As per the standard rules, the one that's found on Java kept the original scientific name, modified only when muntjacs as a whole were given their own genus in 1810. We now call this the red muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak) and it remains one of the best-known species, not least because it's the most widespread.

All the World's Deer: Roe Deer and Reindeer

Roe deer

Of the three species of deer native to Britain, the one that's most often overlooked is probably the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). In fact, it's a common and widespread animal, being found in every major country in Europe except for Ireland, Iceland, and Malta. It's absent from the other Mediterranean islands, too, and doesn't stray far into Russia, but it is found in northern Turkey, and both the Caucasus and Kurdistan regions further east. 

One of the reasons that roe deer aren't so easily brought to mind as fallow or red deer is probably just that they're so much smaller. In fact, they are smaller than any species of deer native to the US or Canada, and by some margin. A fully grown roe deer buck stands no more than 85 cm (2' 9") high at the shoulder, and most are smaller, as of course, are does. They weigh around 25 kg (55 lbs), and have a graceful and slender body compared with most other small deer. The hind legs are slightly longer than the front ones, a feature that's thought to help them creep through dense undergrowth.

All the World's Deer: Deer from the Grasslands, Swamps, and Mountains

Pampas deer

In 1758 Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus was able to describe six of the species of deer we know today. Five, of these, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the five species native to Europe. What may be more surprising is that the odd one out isn't the widespread white-tailed deer, or even one of the Asian species, but one from South America. (As an aside, he also identified two species of what he thought were deer living in Africa. One may not even be real, and if it ever was, was probably a misidentified antelope. The other is very definitely real, but is no longer considered to be a 'deer').

That one exception is what we now call the Pampas deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus). These live, or at least used to, across much of central South America from central Brazil to northern Argentina. Today, they are found primarily in scattered patches of land across the region, although their numbers are just high enough in total to avoid being formally listed as a threatened species (although the same is not true of all the subspecies). The main reason for this is that their preferred habitat, as their common name indicates, is open grassland... and most of that has been converted into farmland, with some estimates suggesting that as little as 1% of the original habitat survives today, as compared with the late 19th century.

All the World's Deer: White-tailed and Mule Deer

White-tailed deer

When I started this series on deer species, I asked some non-experts how many different kinds of deer they were aware of, to see which ones were best known. I got roughly (but not entirely) what I expected, with red deer and fallow deer topping the list. But that's a reflection of where I live; I suspect that, had I been asking Americans, few could have failed to mention the white-tailed deer.

The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is the most widespread and common species of deer in the Americas, and well-known to anyone familiar with the American wilds. They live throughout the whole of the contiguous US, except for the arid south-west, across southern Canada and almost the whole of Mexico. They are also found right across Central America, and into Colombia and Venezuela beyond, reaching the Guyanas and far northern Brazil in the east and as far as Peru in the south.

All the World's Deer: Deer from the Ganges and Beyond

Barasingha

At least before the rise of intensive agriculture, India, with its lush vegetation, was prime habitat for deer. The constraints of geography - the Himalayas to the north and deserts to the west - keep it separate from Europe and central/northern Asia at least, but it's a very large place, able to support a number of local species. When it comes to deer, there are no less than seven species native to the country, although four of those are only found in the north. Across the great bulk of the country, two medium to large species are common: the sambar and the chital. But there used to be three.

That third one was the barasingha (Rucervus duvaucelii). Fortunately, while I say 'used to be', I don't mean that it's extinct, as its closest relative, Schomburgk's deer is. Just that it's no longer common and widespread. It's primarily a grazing species, feeding in long grasslands and on forest edges and there used to be many of these on the Indian subcontinent. As recently as the 19th century, barasingha were found across almost the whole of central and northern India (aside, of course, from the Rajasthan desert) as well as in neighbouring parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. They were especially common along the great floodplains of the Ganges and Indus Rivers.

All the World's Deer: Endangered and Beyond

Eld's deer

A significant number of deer species are endangered. As primarily forest-dwelling animals they are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss, especially in those parts of the world with high human population density and intensive agriculture. Indeed, of the species of deer formally listed as endangered by the IUCN, all but one live in southern and eastern Asia.

Among these is Eld's deer (Panolia eldii), first described by Percy Eld, a British officer working for the Commissioner of Assam, and then more formally written up by army doctor John McClelland in 1842. There is some dispute about the correct scientific name of the animal, due to a number of conflicting studies about where exactly it fits in the deer family tree. It was originally placed in the genus Cervus, along with red deer, but that didn't mean much at the time, since it was 17 years before the theory of natural selection, let alone modern phylogeny. 

All the World's Deer: Deer With Spots

Fallow deer

The fawns of most (but not all) deer species are born with spotted coats, which likely help to camouflage them among the dappled light of a forest. In some species, the spots disappear shortly after birth, while others retain them for a while longer. In five species, however, they keep them all the way into adulthood. I've covered two of these species already: the sika deer of Japan and the um... spotted deer of the Philippines. 

To Europeans, however, the best-known is surely the fallow deer (Dama dama). This is Europe's medium-sized deer, and one of the six original species of deer identified as such in the first list of scientific names in 1758. It lives in woodland areas across most of western and central Europe, preferring broadleaf forests but happy enough with conifers or Mediterranean scrubland. They don't like deep snow, and so aren't found in the Alps or all but the most southerly parts of Scandinavia, but otherwise, they seem pretty adaptable and widespread. Yet, despite being such a familiar animal, they're arguably not really native to the continent.

All the World's Deer: Sambar and Rusa

Sambar

Deer are predominantly woodland animals, so it's no surprise that the extensive warm forests of Southeast Asia, with their many isolated islands, are home to a number of different species. Some of these are closely related to the red deer that live in cooler environments further north, so much so that some authors have recommended moving them back into the genus Cervus to join the red deer and their immediate kin. 

Nonetheless, they do seem to form a distinct branch on the deer family tree - although how many species might be in that branch, and even which ones they might be, is debated. For much of the 20th century, just two or three species were recognised, but genetic evidence gathered in the 21st century has made it more obvious that some of the island forms have been isolated from their mainland relatives for long enough to become clearly distinct.

All the World's Deer: The Red Deer Species Complex

Red deer

When the first list of scientific animal names was drawn up in 1758, all six known species of deer were placed in the genus Cervus - which is, of course, simply the Latin word for "deer". Over the following decades, as taxonomy became more refined, all but one of those species were moved to other genera, and when the deer family, Cervidae, was named in 1810, it had roughly the same meaning that the genus had had so many years before. As its name implies, though, Cervus was selected as the type genus of the family - the one that defines the archetypal group against which all others are compared. Although newly described species had been added since, the one species that was so obviously deer-like it had never been moved anywhere else thus became, in a sense, the defining species of its family.

The Deer Family

Doe (a deer, a female deer)

A little over eight years ago (blimey...) I began a series on members of the goat subfamily, and started it off with a discussion of the difference between horns and antlers. In short, horns are permanent structures, comprised of a central bony core surrounded by a sheath of um... horny material. Antlers, on the other hand, are regrown every year, and once they reach full size and shed the velvet on their outer surface, they consist solely of dead bone, with no sheath of any kind. Antlers are also often branched, whereas 'true' horns never are.

Antlers are, of course, the key defining feature of the deer family, the Cervidae. They are found on (almost) every species in the family, although (almost) only on the males. A large stag with branching antlers is instantly identifiable as a deer, but it may be fair to say that some of the species with unbranched antlers do have a certain resemblance to some of the smaller species of antelope.