Visayan Spotted Deer

Cervus alfredi

One of the most beautiful mammals in the Philippines is the Visayan spotted deer (Cervus alfredi), a little animal that once lived on a set of islands in the central Philippines—Negros, Panay, Cebu, Masbate, and Guimaras, all of which made up the Ice-Age island of Greater Negros-Panay. A healthy adult buck stands only 75 to 80 centimeters at the shoulder, not much larger than some large dogs. Remarkably, this deer is closely related to the sambar deer of southern continental Asia, which can reach over a meter and a half at the shoulder, and weigh as much as 260 kilograms. This discrepancy in size illustrates one of the most consistent rules of island biogeography: Mammals that are largeon mainland areas tend strongly to be smaller on islands, and the larger they are on the mainland the more dramatically reduced they tend to be on the islands. In this light, the presence of a dwarf water buffalo on Mindoro seems less surprising (although one must still adjust to the sight of a buffalo less than a meter tall at the shoulder). Another surprising feature of this deer contributes to its beauty: It is one of the few species of deer that retains the spots it has as a fawn throughout life. The result is what almost seems a toy-like deer, the females so small that they appear to be babies, not the mothers of the even tinier deer standing near them.
     Until the turn of the century, Visayanspotted deer were abundant, living from sea level to the mountaintops but preferring areas where fires, landslides, or other natural disturbances broke the forest canopy and brought tender plants close to the ground. Today, with only a few hundred remaining in the wild, they are one of the two most severely endangered species of deer in the world. Fortunately, captive-breeding program begun a decade ago at Silliman University has successfully established a small but rapidly growing population that will be released back into the wild when conditions in the countryside give them a fair chance of survival.

Original URL: http://archive.fieldmuseum.org/vanishing_treasures/V_Deer.htm