A 28-pound deer squared up against a 1.7-ton rhino and didn’t end up as a pasty reddish-brown smear in the Polish snow.
Thankfully, the encounter was much more adorable, as you probably saw somewhere across every social media app this weekend. The adorable standoff took place at the Wrocław Zoo in Poland, where a male Reeve’s muntjac deer named Tata quite literally and repeatedly butted heads with a fully grown female rhino named Maruśka.
The video, which, given the state of the world, you really need to see as a palate cleanser for your brain and soul, shows Tata repeatedly charging at Maruśka, clashing its tiny antlers with the rhino’s horned snout, all the while refusing to back down from the challenge posed by the hulking beast.
The rhino doesn’t seem at all threatened. That actually seems like it’s having fun, for as much as I can interpret a rhino’s body language. It doesn’t seem intent on fighting back or taking a stand to defend its territory. The deer wanted to bang heads, and the rhino was more than happy to oblige. It’s like when I was taking karate class when I was 10, and a seven-year-old challenged me to a fight every class. I would humor him, which mostly took the form of tossing him around until I got tired, and then he would kick me once and declare it a victory. This is the only context I’ll ever get to say this: I was the rhino in this story.
Similarly, by the end of the encounter, the rhino yields ground, giving the deer the win.
Reeves’s muntjacs are small deer native to southeastern China and Taiwan, now also found in parts of Europe. They’re a lot smaller than most other deer species, but males are no less territorial.
According to Wrocław zookeeper Maciej Okupnik, interactions like this aren’t unusual. Rhinos tend to tolerate other species. They don’t fear many other species and have a short list of species they do consider a threat. Muntjacs and rhinos even share space in the wild and in captivity. Okupnik said Tata was likely acting out of hormonal bravado rather than genuine aggression.
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