Hokkaido sika deer
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
Hokkaido sika deer gain weight and body fat in autumn.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Hokkaido sika deer
- Scientific name
- Cervus nippon yesoensis
- Japanese name
- エゾシカ
- Group
- Land mammals
- Class
- Mammalia
- Order
- Artiodactyla
- Family
- Cervidae
- Genus
- Cervus
The Ezo deer is a subspecies of the sika deer that lives nowhere but Hokkaido.
It lives across almost all of Hokkaido and is larger than the sika deer of Honshu and further south.
Males have antlers but females do not; every spring the antlers fall off at the base and new ones grow.
In summer it eats grasses, and in winter, when food is scarce, it also eats bamboo grass and tree bark.
How the Hokkaido sika deer lives
Newly growing antlers are covered in skin with a dense coat of soft, short hairs. In early autumn, the skin on the antlers thins, eventually leaving the hard parts exposed.
札幌市円山動物園Basic data
- Lifespan
- about 5–8 years in the wild, about 15 years in captivity
- Diet
- Herbaceous plants, pasture grasses, bamboo grass, bark and others
- Range
- Hokkaido
Where the Hokkaido sika deer has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- エゾシカ
- 简体中文
- 虾夷鹿
- 繁體中文
- 蝦夷鹿
- 한국어
- 에조사슴
- Deutsch
- Hokkaido-Sikahirsch
- العربية
- سيكا هوكايدو
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Rusa sika yezo
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 札幌市円山動物園 — エゾシカChecked: 2026-11-03
- 北海道 — エゾシカ対策係（エゾシカについて）Checked: 2026-11-03
- 釧路市動物園 — エゾシカChecked: 2026-11-03
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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