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Sika Deer

 
Animal Encyclopedia: Sika deer
 
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Cervus nippon

TAXONOMY

Cervus nippon Temminck, 1838, Japan.

OTHER COMMON NAMES

French: Sika; German: Sikahirsch; Spanish: Sika.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Medium sized. Shoulder height: 25–48 in (65–120 cm); male body length 66–74 in (168–187 cm); female: 59–69 in (149–176 cm); tail length: 6–7 in (17–19 cm); male weight: 230–310 lb (104–139 kg); female: 132–205 lb (60–93 kg). Males sport antlers to five tines, the second brow tine lacking or represented by a small prominence. Antlers forked in upper part or develop three-tined bush. Coat color in winter is brown-olive or reddish brown. Adult deer develop whitish spots on dorsal part of body and shoulders. Rump patch in winter is rather small. Tail adorned by wide black stripe above and is white underside. Rump hair rises to enlarge the mirror surface. In summer, coat is reddish to whitish below, with distinctive white spots on dorsal part and in stripes on sides. Spots better developed in young than in adult animals.

DISTRIBUTION

East China, Taiwan, Korean Peninsula, southern part of the Russian Far East, and Japan; introduced to New Zealand, European part of Russia, and other countries.

HABITAT

Prefer deciduous forests at seashores and surrounding mountain slopes, but escape coniferous and mixed coniferous-deciduous forests, marshy flood plains. Snow cover deeper than 15.7–19.6 in (40–50 cm) is limiting, and areas with snow cover lasting no more than 140 days are preferable.

BEHAVIOR

Live in small mixed herds, four to 20 individuals, but in spring and summer, females with fawns live in separate groups. During rut, a dominating male keeps some females on the home range. The dominating male banishes young males from a herd during rut, but they return back when rut is over. Sedentary; a summer home range of an individual is about 0.4–0.8 mi2 (1–2 km2), and groups ranging 1.5–1.9 mi2 (4–5 km2). Winter home range is more restricted, to 49–74 ac (20–30 ha). A male arranges six to seven rutting points: by trampling down vegetation, fraying trees with antlers, urinating into a pit, wallowing in mud. At rutting points, males roar.

Excellent runners, can jump to 19.6–26.2 ft (6–8 m) and cross a sea strait as wide as 6 mi (10 km). Animals are extremely vigilant.

FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET

Feed in winter on twigs of trees and shrubs, on bark, buds, leaves, and in some areas on acorns. In winter and autumn, herbs and fungi comprise a main part of the diet. Deer nip off very small pieces of each forage.

REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY

Polygynous. Shed antlers in March–April, first adult, then young males; growth of antlers starts soon after. Rut starts in October. Gestation period is 233–241 days. The first fawns appear in April, calving lasts till the end of May; there is usually one young per birth, rarely two. Both males and females reach sexual maturity early, but take part in breeding later: males at three to four years, females at two and half years.

CONSERVATION STATUS

Eleven subspecies of sika deer are listed by the IUCN: five as Critically Endangered, two as Endangered, and four as Data Deficient.

SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS

Important as game species. As trophies of sport, game meat, antlers, and skin are used. Velvet antlers are valued in Asian medicine. Velvet antler crop farming is significant in China, Thailand, and Korea. At the beginning of the 1980s, there were about 195,000 animals on Chinese farms, mostly Cervus nippon hortulorum. In Korea, mainly Cervus nippon taiouanus is farmed, to 80,000 by the end of the 1980s. Velvet antlers of a single male bring about $600 of pure profit. Also, meat, sinews, and tails from farms are used by local inhabitants.

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Wikipedia: Sika Deer
 
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Sika Deer

Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Cervidae
Subfamily: Cervinae
Genus: Cervus
Species: C. nippon
Binomial name
Cervus nippon
Temminck, 1838
Subspecies

North Honshu Sika Deer C. n. aplodontus
Dybowski's Sika Deer C. n. dybowskii
Shanxi Sika Deer C. n. grassianus
Ryuku Sika Deer C. n. keramae
South China Sika Deer C. n. kopschi
North China Sika Deer C. n. mandarinus
Manchurian Sika Deer C. n. mantchuricus
Vietnamese Sika Deer C. n. pseudaxis
Tsushima Sika Deer C. n. pulchellus
Sichuan Sika Deer C. n. sichuanicus
Formosan Sika Deer C. n. taioanus
Hokkaido Sika Deer C. n. yesoensis

The Sika Deer (Cervus nippon) is a member of the deer family Cervidae that inhabits much of East Asia. It is found in mixed deciduous forests to the north, and mixed subtropical deciduous and evergreen forests to the south. The Sika Deer are closely related to Red Deer, Central Asian Red Deer and elk.


Contents

Subspecies

There are many subspecies of Sika Deer.

The largest race of Sika deer (found in the colder north) are Dybowski's Sika Deer (C. n. dybowskii) of Manchuria and Ussuri Region, and the Hokkaidō Sika Deer (C. n. yesoensis) of Hokkaidō Island in Japan. The Kerama Sika Deer (C. n. keramae) of the Ryukyu Islands is one of the smallest, and unlike other subspecies, has the whole body (including the rump patch) dark brown.

The Formosan Sika Deer (C. n. taioanus) is rather large for an island form being larger than the Kerama Sika Deer and similar in size to deer from Southern China. There are several geographically separated subspecies, but due to the long history of the velvet antler trade (for medicinal values) and farming of Sika deer for antler production in much of Turkestan, China, Mongolia, Manchuria, and the Ussuri Region, the integrity of these subspecies is questionable as many populations have already mixed gene pools. Dybowski's sika deer (Cervus nippon dybowskii) and Formosan Sika Deer (Cervus nippon taioanus) are highly endangered and possibly already extinct in the wild. They can be found in several zoos and are being kept alive by a captive-management program.

Behavior

Sika males are territorial and keep harems of females during the rut, which peaks from early September through October but may last well into the winter months. Territory size varies with type of habitat and size of the buck; strong, prime bucks may hold up to 2 ha. Territories are marked with a series of shallow pits, called "scrapes," into which the males urinate and from which emanates a strong, musky odor. Fights between rival males are sometimes fierce, long, and may even be fatal.

Habitat

Sika Deer are natively found around woodland areas, forests where snowfall does not exceed 10-20 cm. They also are known to inhabit city parks, gardens and market areas. Many have become very tame around humans.

Introduced species from America and Europe inhabit similar woodland areas to their natural habitat of Asia.

Diet

Sika Deer feed on grasses, leaves, twigs, and tender shoots of woody plants depending on seasonal availability.

Distribution

Sika (Deer) are found from the Ussuri region of Siberia south to Korea, Manchuria and Northern and Southern China, with a possibly isolated population in Vietnam. It is also native to Taiwan and Japan and were possibly introduced to a number of countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania. Sika deer are known to escape deer farms and many of the so-called wild sika deer populations in Central and Southern China are descendants of those that have escaped and have re-established themselves in the wild.

Tame deer wandering the streets of Miyajima, Japan

Japan

Sika Deer are widespread in Japan, and readily become tame; at one time they were regarded as sacred. The largest wild populations are in the northern island of Hokkaidō. Following Japanese settlement of Hokkaidō in the latter half of the 19th century, the deer there were hunted almost to the point of extinction, and were reduced to a few small populations.

Legal protection put in place in the mid 20th century was followed by rapid population recovery from the 1950s to the 1980s. In the absence of the natural predators (wolves, now extinct in Japan), some hunting is now encouraged in order to stabilize the population and limit the agricultural damage done by the deer. The present Hokkaidō deer population is still concentrated in the eastern half of the island, and many deer that frequent other parts of the island migrate back to this area during the winter months.

Deer are also present in the more populated islands of Japan: for example, in the ancient capital city of Nara, as well as the sacred island of Miyajima, they wander at will among the temples, and are much photographed (and fed) by tourists. In other parts of Asia, the deer have also been extensively hunted, and legal protection has been less effective, so that several populations and subspecies are now endangered.

Introduced countries

Sika Deer have been introduced into a number of other countries including Australia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Britain, France, Ireland, Jolo Island (south of the Philippines), New Zealand, Poland, Morocco and the United States (Maryland, Texas, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Kansas). In many cases they were originally introduced as ornamental animals in parkland, but have established themselves in the wild.

In Britain and Ireland several distinct wild and feral populations now exist. Some of these are in isolated areas, for example on the island of Lundy, but others are contiguous with populations of the native Red Deer. Since the two species sometimes hybridise, there is a serious conservation concern.

Hunting

Across its original range, and more intensively in many countries to which it has been introduced, the sika is regarded as a particularly prized and elusive sportsman's quarry. In Britain, Ireland and mainland Europe it has been noted that sika display very different survival strategies and escape tactics from the indigenous deer. They have a marked tendency to use camouflage and concealment in circumstances when Red deer, for example, would flee; and have been seen to squat and lie belly-flat when danger threatens in the form of human intrusion.

Hunters and control cullers have estimated that the sika's wariness and "cleverness" makes it three or four times more difficult to bring to bag than a Red or Fallow deer. It has also been widely remarked that sika are much more tenacious of life, and harder to kill with a rifle bullet, than the native deer of Europe and North America. In the British Isles sika are widely regarded as a very serious threat to new and established woodlands, and public and private forestry bodies adopt policies of rigorous year-round culling, generally with little effect.

Among aficionados of venison, sika flesh is regarded as one of the very finest and most flavourful of all game meats at the dinner table.[citation needed]

Antler trade

Sika Deer in China had been domesticated long ago for antler trades, along with several other species. In Taiwan, both Formosan Sika Deer and Formosan Sambar Deer (Cervus unicolor swinhoei) have been farmed for velvet antlers. The only exceptions that may have integrity as a subspecies are possibly the Dybowski's Sika deer of Manchuria and Ussuri region, and the sika deer subspecies that survive in Japan, Ryukyu Islands, and Taiwan. Japan is the only country in Eastern Asia where sika deer were not farmed for velvet antler.

Other deer raised for antler trade were Thorold's Deer (Cervus albirostris), various Central Asian Red Deer (Cervus affinis) subspecies, and Wapiti (Cervus canadensis) subspecies.

Gallery

Dybowski's Sika Deer (C. n. dybowskii)

Formosan Sika Deer (Cervus nippon taioanus)

Formosan Sika Deer in Cougar Mountain Zoo

See also

References

  1. ^ Harris, R.B. (2008). Cervus nippon. 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2008. Retrieved on 5 April 2009. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this species is of least concern.

External links

Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sika Deer
Sister project Wikispecies has information related to: Cervus nippon

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Animal Encyclopedia. Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sika Deer".  Read more

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