Deer Friends: On Safari with Sri Lanka's Deer, Ponies & Donkeys

Deer abound across Sri Lanka, some like the Ceylon Spotted Deer increasingly vulnerable, prey to poachers and habitat loss; others – like the Barking Deer – flourishing and presenting little concern to the scientists who maintain the Red List of Threatened Species. Two species are considered endemic to the island – the Ceylon Spotted Deer, the Sri Lankan Spotted Chevrotain, with Sri Lankan Sambar Deer the subject of mild debate among patriotic environmentalists trying to assess if it is so significantly more evolved as to present nature with what amounts to a new sub species unique to the island. The remaining species found in Sri Lanka are also found across South and Southeast India – the Hog Deer, and the Barkling Deer. Joining these quadrupeds are an extraordinary herd of feral ponies, abandoned by departing colonists; and a pack of wild donkeys, descendants of beasts brought to the island by ancient traders.Troubled by the sheer lack of scientific information about the behaviour of the Ceylon Spotted Deer, the Department of Zoology, at Sri Lanka’s Eastern University, conducted a detailed study of a particular population in Trincomalee. After months of observation, they concluded, reassuringly, that “their main activities were feeding and play.” Scientists are much divided on the subject of animal play, and tortured monographs have been written attempting to pin down the very concept of animal play. To some it is merely an evolutionary by product; others claim it ensures animals teach one another about fairness and consequences. That the Sri Lankan Axis Deer should be minded to play at all is encouraging for it an increasing vulnerable species, its preferred habitats - lowland forests, and shrub lands –shrinking, and with it the grasses, leaves, and fruit it lives on. Their numbers are now counted in just several thousands. They live in herds of up to one hundred, and are seen by leopards, bears, crocodile, jackals, and hungry villagers, as living supermarkets of fresh meat. Standing up to a hundred centimetres high, their delicately white spotted fawn coats present them as everything a perfect deer ought to be, as is appropriate for an animal that is part of the island’s select few endemic mammals.The Mouse Deer Or Sri Lankan Spotted Chevrotain has evolved so dramatically as a species as to present scientists with the opportunity to award it full endemic status as the Sri Lankan Spotted Chevrotain. Barely twelve inches high, it lives scattered in the forests of South & Southeast Asia. The Sri Lankan variant sticks mostly to the dry zones especially Wilpattu, Udawalawa, and Sigiriya. It is tiny, gorgeous, even-toed and, unless you are a plant, entirely harmless– although popular superstition adds the caveat that a man who gets scratched by the hind foot of one will develop leprosy. This has yet to be verified by scientists. Tiny too is the Hog Deer – barely seventy centimetres tall. It has short legs, a predilection to whistle, fine antlers and dark brown fur. It actually looks nothing like a pig but gains that interspecies appellation for its tendency to rush through the forest, head down like one of the racing pigs at Bob Hale Racing Stables in far-off Michigan. Stretching right across the grass lands of Sri Lanka and South and Southeast Asia, it is now classified as extremely vulnerable, its small herds shrinking in the face of habitat loss.Less threatened is The Indian Muntjak or Barking Deer. Carefree, with a propensity to eat almost anything, the Barking Deer is a cuddly irritant in jungle and on low hill estates, its numbers flourishing across South and Southeast Asia. It grows to around sixty centimetres in height and is covered in reddish brown fur and, for males, throws in a modest set of antlers. Shy, solidity, rarely seen in numbers more than two, it gets its name for the dog-barking sound it makes when alarmed. It is a modest, if reliable breeder, with pregnancies lasting six months after which one or, occasionally, two pups are born.But of all the island deer, the Sambar Deer claims gold as the largest and most impressive of the several deer species with which shares its genes. Within Sri Lanka, the species has evolved still further and teeters on the edge of being declared endemic – as the Sri Lankan Sambar (Rusa unicolor unicolor). Much mistaken for an elk by early British colonists eager to shoot it, it can be seen in herds in places like Horton Plains – but it is classified as extremely venerable all the same. It is a tempting target for poachers stocking up on game meat to sell, and the pressures on its grassland habitats are not getting any easier. Typically one and half metres high (sometimes more), their herds consist of females with their fawns, which they usually produce yearly. The males, like men with sheds who have taken the designation to extremes, prefer to live alone - except when the mating urge overcomes them. Fossil records from ...