This beautiful beast is known to the scientific world as a separate species for only three decades, although it was described at the end of the 19th century. In 1870, or a little earlier, the British Prince Alfred, who was in the Philippines, sent the skin and skeleton of a small deer, caught in the dense forests of one of several Visayan islands, located in the central part of the archipelago, to the Zoological Society of London. The package fell into the hands of the taxonomist Philip L. Sclater, and he, having studied it with all possible care, called a new animal a deer Alfred.
For more than a century, scientists have not recognized this discovery as a separate species, believing the Visayan deer as a subspecies of the first Indian zambar, and then the Philippine zambar. At least, neither in the final third volume of “Systematics of mammals” edited by academician Sokolov, published in 1979, nor in his reference book “Rare and Endangered Animals. Mammals ”in 1986 there is not a word about this beast. Nevertheless, in 1983, zoologists of the world decided that still the Alfred deer, he is also a Filipino sika deer, is a completely independent species, and besides, the rarest of deer on the planet, which should be immediately saved ...
Filipino sika deer
This beautiful beast is known to the scientific world as a separate species for only three decades, although it was described at the end of the 19th century. In 1870, or a little earlier, the British Prince Alfred, who was in the Philippines, sent the skin and skeleton of a small deer, caught in the dense forests of one of several Visayan islands, located in the central part of the archipelago, to the Zoological Society of London. The package fell into the hands of the taxonomist Philip L. Sclater, and he, having studied it with all possible care, called a new animal a deer Alfred.
For more than a century, scientists have not recognized this discovery as a separate species, believing the Visayan deer as a subspecies of the first Indian zambar, and then the Philippine zambar. At least, neither in the final third volume of “Systematics of mammals” edited by academician Sokolov, published in 1979, nor in his reference book “Rare and Endangered Animals. Mammals ”in 1986 there is not a word about this beast. Nevertheless, in 1983, zoologists of the world decided that still the Alfred deer, he is also a Filipino sika deer, is a completely independent species, and besides, the rarest of deer on the planet, which should be immediately saved ...