I believe I saw one or two still when I visited this time last year, so they must have died out quite recently- unless I just assumed I'd seen them as I expected to do so.
Thanks Pertinax, thanks Zoogiraffe, I appreciate the info !!!, do you think that Howletts will get more Hog deer or do you think that is the last of them ?, I sure hope they get more !!!, Hog deer are such interesting animals, I like how they run under obstacles like most other deer species jump over them
do you think that Howletts will get more Hog deer or do you think that is the last of them
If they have gone, my guess is they won't go to the effort of replacing them.
I always used to believe Hog Deer would hybridise with Axis/Chital if the two are kept together, but they have done that for many years at both Howletts and Whipsnade with no evidence of any hybridisation. Perhaps it only occurs if there is a single sex of one of the species? In which case these two male Hog Deer could have fitted that bill if they were the last ones there.
I always used to believe Hog Deer would hybridise with Axis/Chital if the two are kept together, but they have done that for many years at both Howletts and Whipsnade with no evidence of any hybridisation. Perhaps it only occurs if there is a single sex of one of the species?
In the Asian Plains reserve at Whipsnade I have always seen the herds of the two species entirely seperate and not near each other at all. At Howletts in the smaller paddock, the spatial distinction between the species is less obvious.
I believe in the wild their ranges do not normally overlap and that the one replaces the other in roughly the same ecological niche.
