For most people, deer are friendly forest dwellers à la Bambi below.
Isn’t he adorable? Unfortunately, Bambi isn’t exactly representative of every deer IRL. He’s definitely nothing like the musk deer species (pictured below) who have terrifying fangs that rival Dracula’s.
Julie Larsen Maher © WCS
Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society recently spotted the vampire deer species — that’s what we’re referring to musk deer as — roaming forests in northeast Afghanistan. Before this, the last documented sighting of vamp deer was all the way back in 1948. The incredible discovery was published in the October issue of Oryx, the international journal of conservation.
Vampire deer may look scary, but there’s nothing frightening about them aside from their teeth. They’re very timid and like to stay hidden, so it’s no surprise they went undetected for over 60 years.
Their fangs serve a bigger purpose than chomping down on tasty necks, though. Vampire deer are full-on herbivores, and males sport elongated canines solely to find a mate during breeding season. They use their teeth as weapons to fight off competitors.
But even though vampire deer are relatively harmless to humans, they’re extremely endangered thanks to habitat loss and poaching. Poachers hunt the deer because its scent glands are worth a ton of cold hard cash — up to $45,000 per kilo, which is more than gold is worth.
WCS hopes to increase funding for ecosystem research in the area so that conservation efforts can better protect the musk deer going forward.
“Musk deer are one of Afghanistan’s living treasures … We hope that conditions will stabilize soon to allow WCS and local partners to better evaluate conservation needs of this species,” said study co-author Peter Zahler in a press release. He is also WCS’ Deputy Director of Asia Programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment