The Taruca Deer (Hippocamelus antisensis), or North Andean Deer, is a native of South America. It’s a mid-sized deer with a heavy body, and it is characterized by sandy brown hair with white patches.
Taruca Deer Size & Measurements
- Head & Body Length – 150 to 170 cm
- Shoulder height – 74 to 77 cm
- Tail length – 10 to 15 cm
- Weight – 45 to 65 kg
What Does the North Andean Deer Look Like?
The North Andean Deer has a variety of names such as the Peruvian Guemel, the Peruvian Huemel and the Taruca Deer. It is very similar in appearance to the South Andean Deer. The form of the antlers is the main difference between the two deer species.
In the North Andean Deer antlers branch close to the rose and the skull.
The South Andean deer, by contrast, has antlers that branch from a small stem further along their length.
Taruca deer antlers are between 20 and 30 cm in length. They are cast after the rut each year on October or November and begin to grow again immediately. They are fully grown by the following March.
In stature the North Andean Deer is a small to mid-sized, short-legged deer. The coat is rough and thick, and in color is a grey-ish sandy brown. There are white markings around the throat. The ears are large and rounded with white insides. The tail is short, and unlike that of the South Andean Deer the underside is brown. South Andean deer tails are white.
Where Does the Taruca Deer Live?
As its name suggests the North Andean Deer lives north of the South Andean Deer.
It has a wide range across the northern Andes mountain chain. You can find Hippocamelus antisensis in Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
While the Taruca is still relatively common, populations are under threat and declining. This is because of over hunting, and also because of competition from domestic livestock. Farming has forced the Taruca out of some of its natural habitats.
Preferred Habitat of the Hippocamelus Antisensis
The North Andean Deer lives high on the mountain steppes in the Andes range. These deer dwell in an Alpine habitat band between the tree line and the snow line.
They dwell at elevations of 3,000 to 5,000 metres and prefer grassy steppes and areas populated by shrubs that provide food and cover.
What Do Taruca Deer Eat?
Life above the tree line calls for an unfussy appetite. Taruca feed mainly on the grasses, sedges, and low-growing herbs of the high Andean steppe, along with the leaves and shoots of hardy alpine shrubs. Unusually for deer, forbs — small flowering ground plants — appear to make up a large share of the diet where they are available. The menu shifts with the seasons: fresh green growth dominates during the wet season, while in the long dry months the deer fall back on tougher grasses and woody browse. It is a spare diet compared with what most deer eat in richer lowland habitats, but the taruca’s compact, heavy body helps it conserve energy in the thin, cold air.
Social Life and Behavior
The taruca stands out among deer for how social it is. While many mountain deer live alone, taruca are typically found in groups of a handful up to a dozen or more animals, and larger gatherings are sometimes seen outside the breeding season. Interestingly, groups are often led by an adult female rather than a male — a trait more familiar from wild sheep and goats than from most deer behavior.
Taruca are largely active during daylight, feeding in the morning and late afternoon and resting among rocks at midday. Herds also move seasonally along the mountainsides, shifting between higher and lower ground as weather and forage change through the year. When threatened, they rely on their gray-brown coats to blend into the rocky slopes, standing motionless before bounding away over terrain few predators can follow.
Reproduction and Fawns
The taruca rut takes place in the Southern Hemisphere winter, roughly June through August, when males spar with their short, forked antlers for access to females. After a gestation of around eight months, a single fawn is typically born early in the wet season, when fresh plant growth gives the mother the nutrition she needs to nurse. The fawn spends its first weeks lying hidden among rocks and shrubs, visited by its mother to feed, before joining the group.
Predators and Threats
The puma is the taruca’s chief natural predator, patrolling the same high slopes the deer inhabit. Fawns may also be taken by the culpeo, the largest of the Andean foxes. Increasingly, though, the most serious dangers come from people and their animals:
- Competition with livestock — sheep, cattle, llamas, and alpacas graze the same alpine pastures and can push taruca out of prime feeding grounds
- Domestic and feral dogs, which chase and kill deer around villages and herding camps
- Poaching for meat, despite legal protection
- Habitat fragmentation from farming, fencing, roads, and mining in the high Andes
Is the Taruca Endangered?
The IUCN Red List classifies the taruca as Vulnerable, with populations believed to be declining across much of its range. The species is legally protected in the countries where it occurs, and its strongholds today are largely within national parks and reserves in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Because taruca live at low densities scattered across vast, remote terrain, accurate counts are difficult — one reason continued monitoring matters so much for deer conservation in the Andes.
Taruca vs. the South Andean Deer
The taruca’s only close relative is the South Andean deer, or huemul — the two make up the genus Hippocamelus. Beyond the antler and tail differences described above, the clearest contrast is where they live. The taruca is a creature of the high, open puna of the central Andes, generally staying above the tree line. The huemul lives far to the south in Patagonia, at lower elevations, and makes much more use of forest and shrubland. Their ranges do not overlap, and the huemul is the rarer of the two, so any wild Hippocamelus seen north of central Chile or Argentina is almost certainly a taruca.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the name “taruca” mean?
The name comes from Indigenous Andean languages — it is the word for deer in Quechua, and a similar form is used in Aymara. It is sometimes spelled “taruka.”
How many fawns does a taruca have?
Normally just one. Twins are rare in this species, as they are in most mountain-dwelling deer, where raising even a single fawn in such a harsh environment is demanding.
Related species: To keep exploring South America’s mountain deer, meet the taruca’s Patagonian cousin the South Andean deer, or scale down dramatically with the southern pudu and northern pudu.
