Muntjac often mistaken for a fox or brown dog
SINCE it is only about the size of a gun dog, the Muntjac is the smallest deer we have in Ireland. The genus is native to south Asia and there are about a dozen species. The word ‘muntjac’ is believed to be a variation of the Javanese ‘mindjangan’, the name of the species found on that Indonesian island.
Our species hails from China and Taiwan and is named after John Reeves, so it is known as both the Chinese Muntjac and Reeves’ Muntjac. And since it barks loudly like a dog, another name for it is the Barking Deer.
John Reeves was a nineteenth century English naturalist. He worked as inspector of tea for the British East India Company and was responsible for introducing information about oriental wildlife and several Chinese plants and animals to the Western world.
Originally, the Muntjac was probably introduced to Ireland as an ornamental species in large estates. Subsequently, it may have been illegally introduced as a quarry species for hunting. Either way, escapees living wild are now regarded as undesirable invasive aliens causing traffic accidents on roads and damage to our native woodland vegetation.
The number of Muntjacs in Ireland is unknown. There is a well-established breeding population in Co Down with additional records from counties Antrim, Fermanagh, Armagh, Donegal, Wicklow, Kildare, Meath, Wexford and Cork.
Since they are small, bark, are russet brown in colour and are solitary and furtive in habit, it is believed that a distant sighting of one is often misidentified as a Fox or a brown dog. The fact that they are also most active at dusk and dawn when the light is poor does not help in getting a good view of one.
Only the adult males have antlers. Up close, adult males also have long, upper canine teeth that can protrude like curved tusks, and two black lines running down from their antlers to form a V-shape. As shown above, they also have large, dark scent glands under each eye for marking their territories.
When walking or standing, a characteristic Muntjac pose is for the animal to hold its head lower than its back giving it a distinctly hunched appearance. When alarmed, these tiny deer flee with their tails held vertically, showing the white undersides.
To better understand its status in Ireland, anybody who spots a Muntjac is asked to report the sighting to our National Biodiversity Data Centre via its very user-friendly online recording form.