A deer built for slipping between tree trunks rather than standing out on open grasslands. It lives only in the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil, in parts of São Paulo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina, making its home range one of the tiniest of any deer in the Americas. Its coat is a rich reddish-brown on the body, with a greyer neck and face, and the back legs shading into dark brown or almost black near the hooves, like it’s wearing long dark socks. Males grow short, simple spike-like antlers, not big branching ones, and both sexes have big, soft-looking eyes and a compact, rounded body that helps them move through dense plants without getting stuck.

It eats a mix of fallen fruits, leaves, shoots and other soft plant parts, and by swallowing seeds and dropping them elsewhere in its dung, it acts as a seed spreader for many forest trees. Most of the time it lives alone or in pairs rather than in herds, and even scientists rarely see it directly. Much of what we know comes from camera traps, hoofprints, and clever use of DNA from its droppings to confirm that this shy deer has passed by.

One of the coolest things about the small red brocket is how recently science “met” it. Local people already knew this little red deer, but it was only recognised as a separate species in 1996, after researchers noticed that some brocket deer in the Atlantic Forest were smaller, differently coloured and, on closer study, had a different set of chromosomes from similar species. It looks a bit like a mix between the tiny pygmy brocket and the larger red brocket, which is why it confused experts for so long.

Distribution

Country

Population est.

Status

Year

Comments

Brazil

8,500

VU

2015

Paraná, São Paulo, Santa Catarina