Rare sight: Sambar deer spotted sprinting across Mandai Road

Screengrab from video
Screengrab from video

In an unusual sight, the rare sambar deer was spotted darting across Mandai Road yesterday. Recorded in a dash cam video, the split second incident happened around 12:20pm when 58-year-old Nelson Soh was en route to Mandai Columbarium to attend a funeral, The Straits Times reported.

“It suddenly dashed over and I braked, but it was so fast,” Soh told ST. “It looked like some sort of deer, but it was quite big-sized. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve seen such a huge deer in Singapore.”

The Nature Society (Singapore)’s Vertebrate Study Group told the publication that, based on the animal’s size and fur color, it was a sambar deer. Back in 2010, it estimated that there were less than 20 such creatures in Singapore.

Also known as the sambaur deer, the animal consumes leaves, fruits, and bugs, and usually live up to 20 years in the wild in Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, China, and Indonesia.

In Singapore, they’re often found in the vicinity of MacRitchie Nature Reserve and Upper Seletar Reservoir. The last reported sighting of the deer was in October.



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