Deer with 'Vampire Fangs' Spotted for 1st Time in Decades

Nov 5, 2014 | Kelly Dickerson
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An endangered deer with vampire-like fangs was spotted for the first time in nearly 60 years, in a remote forest in northeastern Afghanistan.

The fanged creature is known as the Kashmir musk deer, and it's native to the Himalayas of northern India, Pakistan's Kashmir region and northern Afghanistan. Only the male deer have fangs, and they use them during mating season to compete for females. A team of researchers scoured Afghanistan's Nuristan province during 2008 and 2009, and recorded five sightings of the animal. This was the first time the species had been spotted since 1948. The sightings were described in this month's edition of the journal Oryx.