Just when you thought Bambi couldn't get any cuter, meet the pudu, the world's smallest deer. Standing little taller than a domestic cat, what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for in allure.
Doe-eyed, button-nosed, with little legs and perky ears, this diminutive South American mammal looks like it has stepped straight out of a Disney film.
There are two species of pudu: southern and northern, aka small and smaller.
The southern pudu, which has chestnut-brown fur, is native to the Valdivian temperate forests of south-central Chile and Argentina.
Meanwhile, the northern pudu, which has a lighter coat and a darker face, is native to the Andes of Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador.
Adult northern pudus weigh about the same as a domestic moggy, but it’s here that the cat similarities stop. Pet cats don’t willingly sport fancy headgear, but pudus do.
Every year, adult males grow a pair of smart, single-pointed, backwards-facing antlers that they use for ‘jousting.’ In the rutting season, which falls in the southern hemisphere autumn, males compete with each other to cement their territory and establish dominance and mating rights.
Fights get messy. Males jump, kick, thrash with their forelegs, chase one another and lock antlers. Think Bambi meets bare-knuckle brawling.
The rest of the time, however, they keep themselves to themselves. If they’re not males fighting, or females raising their fawns, pudus live a solitary existence. In the wild, they’re hard to spot.
During the day, they lay low in the dense forest undergrowth, but as the light fades, they sneak out to do important pudu jobs, like marking their territory with dung, and eating.
When it comes to food, pudus favour the low-hanging fruit, metaphorically and literally. Because of their diminutive stature, they readily eat plant material that can be found on or near to the ground, such as herbs, ferns, tree bark and fallen fruit.
If they fancy a snack from higher up, however, they’ll either stand on their hind legs or climb branches to reach it. And if that doesn’t work, pudus have been observed using their front legs to press down on saplings until they bend or snap, all for the juicy, fresh leaves.
These are nervous animals that move cautiously and spook easily. This is understandable, because when you’re little, everything seems big, including the Andean foxes, horned owls and cougars, which eat pudus.
When frightened, pudus bark an alarm call, before zigzagging pronto to the safety of the undergrowth.
Although they breed well in captivity, in the wild, things aren’t so peachy. Pudus are in danger from the destruction of their forest habitat, which is being cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and logging.
They’re also captured for the pet trade and killed for food by specially trained hunting dogs.
A recent study has also found that wild pudu are picking up infections from neighbouring farm animals and while the consequences of this remain uncertain, one thing is for sure: this is a little deer that deserves a lot more respect.
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