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| 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.
