Chinese Water Deer
The Chinese water deer has a teddy bear face fluffy ears and huge fangs. When we think of artiodactyls, we probably think they'll have horns or antlers, not fangs like a big cat.
The teeth look to long to be any help in assisting with digestion, and the water deer is a ruminant, which means it has a four chambered stomach. The Chinese water deer's diet is herbivorous, however, a part of the ruminal physiology of the Chinese water deer is not well developed and they are not able to properly digest a diet of highly fibrous plant material.
Like most deer, the males of the species use these bony appendages to fight other males. These are solitary animals and the males will fight other males who come too close. I could not find if this was also a characteristic used in sexual selection, the territorial behavior only gets worse during mating season, so maybe that's something that should be studied in in the future. The males battle other males kind of like giraffes (that's how its described in the article at least, I tried to find a video of males fighting each other but I think I just found one where the male is trying to mate). They stand shoulder to shoulder and try to stab each other in the neck and back. Why are antlers more common tools for fighting in deer instead of fangs. The fangs are so cute :3
They have inguinal scent glands, which most other species of cervids do not posses. These glands are located in the area around their groin. The water deer lives in a place where tall grass and tall water plants grow. This is most likely an evolution that came about as advantageous for scent marking their territory, as they seem to be very territorial animals. Being solitary from members of their own species also probably helped facilitate this adaptation, they know that there are other deer in the area and the males know if they are intruding in another males territory.
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Okay Megan, this is one of weirdest creatures I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about this animal because I've never heard or seen it before. It makes sense that intimidating features such as fangs would have some kind of intimidation or defense role as you noted.
It's weird there wasn't any evidence of their relation to sexual selection, as most things involved in intimidation seem to also be an indicator of mate strength. That would definitely an interesting thing to study, as you mentioned.
Good work!
Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard of Chinese water deer before reading this! They truly are a strange sort of cervid, but I'm not terribly surprised by the evolution of those tusks, given similar herbivores with tusks like hogs and elephants. I wonder if anyone has done research into the convergent evolution of these tusk-like morphologies and what possibly triggers or influences it in a population. Thanks for sharing!