SOUTH AMERICA 413 



PERUVIAN GUEMAL; "TARUGA" 



HIPPOCAMELUS ANTISIENSIS (d'Orbigny) 



Cervus antisiensis d'Orbigny, Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris, vol. 3, p. 91, 1834 (Andes, 



near La Paz, Bolivia). 

 SYNONYMS: Anomalocera huamel Gray, Scientific Opinion, p. 384, 1869; Xenelaphus 



chilensis Gray, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. 12, p. 61, 1873. 

 FIG.: Lydekker, 1898, pi. 23 (col.). 



This small deer is confined to a rather restricted alpine 

 habitat in the Andes and may be included here as a game 

 animal that may need more protection. Somewhat smaller 

 than a Virginia deer, having a coarse brittle coat and lacking 

 metatarsal glands, this species is of a nearly uniform speckled 

 brown and buffy, with a darker line on the forehead. Tail dark 

 brown on base and most of the upper surface, but its tip and 

 lower side are white. The antlers are present in males only, 

 and consist of a short fork commencing close to the burr. 

 Height at shoulder about 34 inches (Lydekker). 



In the Andes of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile 

 this species is found at high altitudes, mainly between 14,000 

 and 16,000 feet but at times lower. Lydekker in 1898 wrote 

 that it was abundant in Ecuador on Chimborazo, Pichincha, 

 and Cotapaxi, but Richardson in 1912-13, collecting for the 

 American Museum of Natural History, failed to obtain speci- 

 mens when he was in that region. In Peru, Tschudi gives some 

 account of its habits and speaks of it as frequenting rocky 

 areas, often hiding in caves by day, and coming out in the 

 evening to feed on mosses and other vegetation, and lichens. 

 Osgood (1914) in his journey to northern Peru in 1912 did not 

 find even a track of one and writes that "so far as learned from 

 inquiry, it never has been common in the region and it was only 

 at rare intervals that we met a man who ever had seen one. 

 A few doubtless remain in the higher parts of both the western 

 and the eastern cordillera but at the points we were able to 

 touch " none was found. The Peruvian Indians call it "taruga," 

 and Tschudi mentions that he was to have named it Cervus 

 taruga but discovered that d'Orbigny had already described it. 

 It seems likely that the drives formerly held on a large scale by 

 the Peruvian Indians must often have captured these small 

 deer. On his later visit to the Arequipa region, Osgood (1916) 

 secured a single specimen at Pampa de Arrieros, Peru. It was 

 found up to an altitude of 13,000 feet, ranging somewhat lower 



