Tag Archives: Père David’s Deer

the hooves of a cow but not a cow, the neck of a camel but not a camel, antlers of a deer but not a deer, the tail of a donkey but not a donkey

PereDavidMoltingLast Winter Solstice, when I drove around Texas, I stopped by my friend Jane’s place in Boerne and saw the Père David’s deer that had appeared on her property months earlier. The funny, definitely archaic-looking creature was discovered by an old French missionary, Père Armand David, back in 1866 when he was trying to convert the Chinese. (Wonder how that went.) Also known as the milu, it is still among the rarest 10 species in the world.

The Père David’s deer is presumably native to Northern China, but (according to Wikipedia) archaeologists have found their antlers at settlements from the Liao River in the north to Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province and across the Yellow and Yangtze River Basins in Shaanxi and Hunan Province. By the time the priest came upon them at the Emperor’s game park near Beijing, few remained. He sent a carcass back to Europe. Right away an Englishman got interested in the funny creature and brought a group of them back to his estate in England, Woburn Abbey. A few other Europeans followed suit at the end of the century and they were scattered around several zoos on the continent.

This was most fortunate, because much of the Chinese herd died in a flood in 1895 and the remaining deer were killed during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.  davidsantlers

Best of all, the marvelous Wikipedia also describes the deer’s Chinese name, sibuxiang:

sibuxiang (Chinese: 四不像; pinyin: sì bú xiàng; Japanese: shifuzō), literally meaning “four not alike”, which could mean “the four unlikes” or “like none of the four”:

  • “the hooves of a cow but not a cow, the neck of a camel but not a camel, antlers of a deer but not a deer, the tail of a donkey but not a donkey”
  • “the nose of a cow but not a cow, the antlers of a deer but not a deer, the body of a donkey but not a donkey, tail of a horse but not a horse”
  • “the tail of a donkey, the head of a horse, the hoofs of a cow, the antlers of a deer”
  • “the neck of a camel, the hoofs of a cow, the tail of a donkey, the antlers of a deer”

It’s like a poem!

(From: “China To Return More David’s Deer To the Wild”. People’s Daily Online. January 13, 2000.)