A small deer of the grassy plains of southern Asia that runs crouched, head low, rather than bounding like most deer when it flees, a behaviour that earns it its common name of “hog deer”.
Small and stocky, with legs short in relation to the body, and reddish-brown to brownish fur that darkens in winter. Males bear relatively small three-tined antlers. Runs with the head down and the body crouched rather than leaping like other deer, a distinctive trait that gives it its common name.
Narrow paths through tall, dense grassland; small cloven-hoof tracks; droppings as small oval pellets; patches of flattened grass where it lies up during the day.
Tall, damp lowland grassland, often near watercourses, in scattered areas of the Indian subcontinent and mainland South-east Asia.
Herbivorous; grazes tall grasses of damp grassland.
Mainly solitary, although it can form small groups in areas of good grass availability. Heavily dependent on tall, damp grassland, a habitat that has suffered a sharp reduction.
Population in steep decline owing to the near-total conversion of its damp grassland habitat into farmland, with fragmented and very reduced populations over most of its former range.
Near-total loss of damp grassland habitat through agricultural conversion, poaching and capture for trade.
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