It wasn’t really dead. It, using the collective “it” here to mean an entire species, was believed to be extinct. But turns out it wasn’t extinct, since it has been rediscovered still alive in Vietnam. It isn’t a mouse, either. Nor is it a deer. In actuality it is an ungulate, the world’s smallest example thereof, about the size of a housecat and weighing no more than ten pounds. But the Mouse Deer, or Tragulus versicolor, to give its scientific nom de plume, really *does* have fangs. Two not-so-little vampire-like fangs that would make any vampire bat envious.
The Mouse Deer of Vietnam isn’t the only kind of deer to sport fangs. Most species of fanged deer are similarly small. Their fangs are actually an evolutionary throwback to the bygone millennia when such creatures were more diminutive yet looked more like predators, though they weren’t. Sadly most fanged deer are also endangered, some critically so. Except for over in England. They’re so plentiful in England that they’re actually something of a pest species. Maybe they, like Dracula, decided to go to England and really took to it once they got there.
How adorable! Great article…would love to see the little vampires take over Newfoundland!