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Winchester (dpa) - A rare Java Kantschil, one of the smallest ungulates in the world, was born in a southern English zoo.
The animal from the deer piglet family weighs just 370 grams and is the size of a rat, announced the Marwell Zoo near Winchester.
"There are very few zoos that keep deer piglets," said the zoo's ungulate expert Tim Rowlands.
"They are so small, very mysterious and nocturnal that every newborn is good news for the conservation breeding program."
Java Kantschile (Tragulus javanicus) originally live on the Indonesian island of Java of the same name.
They are hunted there for their meat or kept as pets, as the zoo emphasized.
The babies can run and jump soon after they are born, they only occasionally suckle from their mother at night, Rowlands said.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210224-99-573358 / 2
Zoo announcement