The Duke of Bedford and the Pere David's deer

vogelcommando

vogelcommando

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
As is commonly known, the Duke of Bedford can be seen as the person who saved the Pere David's deer. In almost every book about the subject it sais that he obtained these animals from all over Europe and started to breed them. Less well known is that only 6 animals ( 1 male and 5 females ) actualy bred and all animals today are siblings of these 6 animals !
I was not able to find out howmany Pere David's deer were origianaly ontained by the Duke of Bedford and from which collections he bought them, any ZooChatter which can help me here ???
 
The Duke of Bedford....

Give me a day or two to find 'The Years of Transition' & I may have an answer.
 
According to Ernst M. Lang (International Zoo Yearbook, volume 4 page 63), it was 7.
 
I have seen the total variously described in different Zoo books as '16' or '18', or 7.7 + 2 young, or 8.8.+ 2 young, so only half were female, giving the actual founder stock of around 1.5 mentioned above as being fairly accurate.

I don't know which Zoos they came from but I believe one Zoo did not release their deer to Woburn- I believe it may have been Berlin.
 
Pertinax said:
I have seen the total variously described in different Zoo books as '16' or '18', or 7.7 + 2 young, or 8.8.+ 2 young, so only half were female, giving the actual founder stock of around 1.5 mentioned above as being fairly accurate.

I don't know which Zoos they came from but I believe one Zoo did not release their deer to Woburn- I believe it may have been Berlin.
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I have heard from somebody who has actually seen the records at Woburn that ALL Pere David's Deer descend from a single pair that bred at Berlin in the 1880s....
 
IanRRobinson said:
I have heard from somebody who has actually seen the records at Woburn that ALL Pere David's Deer descend from a single pair that bred at Berlin in the 1880s....
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So the ones collected by the Duke from the various European zoos were all acquired by those zoos from Berlin? It would rather make sense in so much as a Chinese animal like this might be somewhat unlikely to have been obtained by several different European Zoos, especially that long ago.
 
The Duke of Bedford.....

Managed to find ' The Years of Transition', by Hastings, Duke of Bedford ( son of Herbrand, who imported the initial stick of Pere David's from the Continent). He does not mention the exact number, but I quote
'......from Paris, Antwerp and Belgium my father imported the few animals which formed the original nucleus of our herd. The Paris deer certainly bred and so, I think, did the Antwerp hinds, but the Antwerp stag was a poor specimen and the two Berlin hinds, though they lived to an immense age, were barren'.
Not as much help as I expected. I wonder if detailed records are preserved at Woburn? The book, for those who don't know it (and even those who do) is a great read, or rather the natural history parts are. The autobiographical and political bits are fascinating in very different ways. Ungulatenerd in particular would probably enjoy it.
 
Pertinax said:
So the ones collected by the Duke from the various European zoos were all acquired by those zoos from Berlin? It would rather make sense in so much as a Chinese animal like this might be somewhat unlikely to have been obtained by several different European Zoos, especially that long ago.
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In his ( dutch ) book Een moderne ark van Noach Dr. A.C.V. van Bemmel mention that the Emperor of China has send animals to Berlin, London, Paris and Amsterdam.
@ all who contibuted to the subject : Thanks a lot !
 
Interesting subject for discussion. ;)

Does anyone know whereabouts they were first kept at Woburn? They weren't liberated in the main park until after they started increasing. My guess would be one of the old stable-type buildings with an attatched 'deer yard' which I think is still on the Woburn estate somewhere.
 
bongorob said:
According to Ernst M. Lang (International Zoo Yearbook, volume 4 page 63), it was 7.
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IZYB volume 27 says it was 18, so perhaps only 7 of the 18 were capable of breeding.

A reference

Bedford, (12th) Duke of (1951). Père David's Deer: the history of the Woburn herd. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 121:327-333
 
bongorob said:
IZYB volume 27 says it was 18, so perhaps only 7 of the 18 were capable of breeding.

A reference

Bedford, (12th) Duke of (1951). Père David's Deer: the history of the Woburn herd. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 121:327-333
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If 18 were imported ( a figure I've seen mentioned before- see above) and we presume they were roughly equal male/female ratio that would give approx 9.9. If from the Duke's memoirs quoted above, at least two females, the ones from Berlin, didn't breed, that leaves a pool of no more than 7 females, maybe less which is getting close to the 1.5 that are stated did breed (you only need one breeding stag obviously).
 
FBBird said:
but I quote
'......from Paris, Antwerp and Belgium my father imported the few animals which formed the original nucleus of our herd.
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I guess he, or you(?) meant Berlin rather than Belgium here?

Five zoos are mentioned in different texts as having received deer from China; London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Paris. Maybe the London/Amsterdam animals died earlier, as it seems the founder stock at Woburn came from only the last three places.
 
I wonder if anybody has looked at material from animals that died before 1900 to see how much genetic loss has occurred? Had Pere David's Deer survived a bottle-neck in the Imperial Hunting Park, I wonder?
 
Pertinax said:
I read somewhere that during the Boxer rebellion, starving peasants broke into the Park and killed many of the Deer for food. Then later on the remaining deer were all killed too (by soldiers?) indicating that by then only a small number were left- but I have no idea exactly what number is being talked about. I would think they had almost certainly experienced a bottleneck by then.
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when Pere David first saw the deer in 1864, that population had been isolated within the walls of the hunting preserve for about 700 years (and they were largely extinct everywhere else). In 1895 floods broke down part of the walls and most of the deer were killed by peasants for food. Fewer than thirty deer survived, and these were killed in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion.
 
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