Smokey vs Dik-dik

Dik–diks compared to cats.

Dik-dik (Photo credit: cramsay23)

Recently I was looking up some animal facts, and I found something rather interesting.  The smallest known deer on earth is the dik–dik, inhabiting South Africa.  These deer are just slightly bigger than my cat.  To avoid confusion, I should tell you just how big my male Maine Coon, Smokey, is.  And I’ll throw in the dik-dik’s dimensions too.  Smokey is 3 feet from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.  Although his tail alone is more than a foot long, it is considered short for his breed.  A dik-dik on the other hand is 28 inches in length.  Smokey’s shoulder height is 12 .5 inches and the length from his back paws to his tail tip is 29 inches.  The dik-dik makes up for its length with long legs making it’s shoulder height 12 to 18 inches.  And last but certainly not least, Smokey weighs 11.5 pounds (he is apparently going to continue growing for a few more years.)  A dik-dik will weigh anything between 7 to 16 pounds.  Now Smokey is undoubtedly a big boy, but I never really realized how big.  It is sort of hard to imagine my cat’s tail going over a deer’s head, but I guess the dik–dik has bigger problems.  Talking about size, I bet you didn’t know that female dik-diks are usually larger than the males.  This undeniably gives them an edge when defending their young.  The world’s smallest deer are not seen very often due to the shyness that made it possible for them to survive this long, and the fact that they don’t travel in herds.  Now it might be a little hard to think of a deer that is the same size as a large cat, but I assure you.  Dik-diks are real and so is the accompanying video.  So if you want to get a better grip of the Smokey/dik-dik size ratio, go to : http://youtu.be/EuYXJsKBgjE