Move over Baby Yoda and Baby Groot, the world has a new cute creature to obsess over. Last week, the Bristol Zoo welcomed a baby mouse deer to its ranks. The tiny fella comes in at only 20cm in height.
According to the Bristol Zoo, the newborn lesser Malayan mouse deer was born about a month ago during lockdown in the UK.
The sex of the deer hasn’t been revealed but we do know that it clocks in at only 8-inches tall to shoulder height. When it’s fully grown it will weigh just 1.5 kg.
The mouse deer was born to parents, Jorah and Brienne. The newborn marks only the second mouse deer to be born at the Bristol Zoo in the last decade. The first one was named Missandei and was later transferred to the Netherlands for a breeding program.
This new mouse deer is currently nameless but send any Game of Thrones-themed suggestions in the Bristol Zoo’s direction.
If you’re just learning about mouse deer, they are very rare and are native to forests in South East Asia. They feed on flowers and vegetable matter. I’m sure I can replicate that environment for it here in Australia, right?
Paige Bwye, the senior mammal keeper at Bristol Zoo, gave this update on the deer’s health:
“It will be a little while until we are able to determine the gender of the fawn as they’re so small and quite shy. It’s doing really well though, and has recently started to discover new tastes, such as sweet potato.”
Just to give you an idea of exactly how tiny this guy is, 20cm is roughly the height of a pencil. This mouse deer is smaller than your average water bottle or your fork, or your laptop screen. It can’t even top the height of two iPhones stacked on top of each other.
To give you an even better idea of what we’re dealing with, check out this video from the Bristol Zoo.
We have another new arrival!
This is a lesser Malayan mouse deer & is around the same height as a standard pencil. ✏️
The infant was born to mother Brienne & father Jorah, almost a month ago inside their enclosure alongside our Livingstone’s fruit bats:https://t.co/w2xuTYR1Ar pic.twitter.com/w9Zxqlvklu— Bristol Zoo Gardens (@BristolZooGdns) April 22, 2021
I would die for this mouse deer.