Endangered
Black Musk Deer
Moschus fuscus
Black Musk Deer is a mammal in the family Moschidae (order Artiodactyla) — Moschus fuscus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Males and females are similarly sized, between 70 and 100 cm in length and 10 and 15 kg in weight, and generally have thick brown hair. There is variation in color and vibrancy, that is evident in spotting.
Range and habitat
It is found in Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, and Nepal.
Habitat labels include shrubland.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
The black musk deer is nocturnal, and most of their activities take place at night, dawn and dusk. This species is highly solitary.
Living in the mountainous areas that have gorges and forests, these agile deer possess the ability to climb trees and move freely even at the dangerous edge of a cliff or in the very thick bushes.
In crisis
Even the black musk deer, although only endangered, its lack of species numbers has a detrimental effect on the environment in that it lives and the food web in that it participates. Because they are hunted by humans and other animals such as the wolverine, lynx, and yellow-throated marten, their numbers have been greatly reduced, so they are now on the endangered species list. With fewer black musk deer around, it has become more difficult for these predators to find food, greatly affecting the food web.
Due to excessive hunting, it has been since placed on the endangered list. Not much is being done to save the deer from possible extinction.
Black Musk Deer is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Black Musk Deer, Wikidata item Q949818. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
