The Nordic Ark, July 12th 2008. Part Three

When you begin the nature walk, the first exhibit you come to is the Southern Pudú (Pudu pudu) which was a new animal to all of us. For my part I had never even heard of it till I checked out the list of exhibits at the park's website on Friday. I was looking at the list with a coworker and we didn't know what that animal was ... then after when we clicked on it and saw the picture of it we still didn't know what it was. :-D But after a little research (thanks to Google :-) it turned out that the Pudú is the world's smallest deer. We were excited about seeing it, since it was new to all of us, but trilltrall may have had a little bit more interest than the rest of us because the Pudú is native to Chile, and trilltrall is Chilean-Norwegian. So we figured it would be really cool to see it. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see just then. The park currently has two adult Pudús - a breeding pair - and one fawn (their offspring), but all we saw was one of the adults sleeping in the indoor part of the enclosure. (I think it's the female, but I may be wrong on that one.) The sign said that Pudú are crepuscular animals, and as this was at about 11:30 am, it wasn't too surprising that there wasn't much to see.

I tried taking a picture, but well ... the glare off the window rendered it less than impressive. :-)

It was really cute when it groomed itself ... even though it just looks like a ball with ears right here. :-)

(Photo credit: me)