Tiny pudu fawn has arrived!

Posted by Craig Newberry, Communications

Photos by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo

The Woodland Park Zoo family just got cuter with the arrival of a tiny female pudu fawn. Pudus are the smallest deer species in the world and are native to South America.

The fawn, which has yet to be named, was born May 5 to parents Ted and Maggie. The birth is the pudus' fourth offspring together since they were paired under the Pudu Species Survival Plan, a cooperative breeding program across accredited zoos to help ensure a healthy, self-sustaining population of the species.

The fawn's father, Ted, is 7 years old and arrived at the zoo in 2017. The mother, Maggie, 6, came in 2018. This is the pair’s first female fawn. All three of their male fawns now live at accredited zoos across the country and are doing well.

“We are very excited to have the first female pudu birth at the zoo since 2010. The fawn is healthy and continues to get more comfortable exploring the habitat,” said Shawn Pedersen, an animal curator at Woodland Park Zoo. The pudus live in the zoo’s Temperate Forest habitat.

About Pudus

• Woodland Park Zoo is home to the southern pudu species. It lives in the lower Andes of Chile and southwest Argentina. 
• The small deer reaches only 14 to 18 inches high at the shoulder and weighs 14 to 30 pounds. 
• The compact deer lives in temperate rain forests and favors dense underbrush and bamboo thickets, which provide good cover from predators. The pudu can easily move through dense vegetation and among rocks to escape predators such as puma, fox and feral dogs. 
• The pudu is listed as near-threatened due to hunting and a rapidly growing human population in the region that is leading to the loss of natural habitat due to clearing of land for agriculture, logging, and other human activities.