A distinctly two-tone mouse deer that was feared lost to science has been captured on film foraging for food by camera traps set up in a Vietnamese forest.

The pictures of the rabbit-sized animal, also known as the silver-backed chevrotain, are the first to be taken in the wild and come nearly 30 years after the last confirmed sighting.

Despite the name, they are neither mice nor deer, but the world’s smallest ungulate, or hoofed animal.

Pretty damned cool looking critter.

Sure is, I bet it's make a cool pet.

"They are shy and solitary, appear to walk on the tips of their hooves and have two tiny fangs,"

Before the recent discovery, a total of five silver-backed chevrotains had been seen in only two confirmed instances: in 1910, when researchers acquired four specimens, and in 1990, when a joint Vietnamese-Russian expedition obtained a silver-backed chevrotain that had been killed by a hunter.

That’s cool that it’s not extinct. I would hope that things like this would humble science with how much they don’t know.

I bet even a 270 could take down one of those.

Creedmoor?

Wishful thinking!

In .05 caliber. Hell, Use a .458 case....

Or one of those .7mm calibers I once read about in a Fake News article.

pot size, probably scare my fox.

I know....but I’m humbled. Those of us that spend our lives outdoors and enjoy the wilderness for more than just a passing moment or those of us that spend any time on the ocean and it’s all consuming openness understand how much we don’t know or just how much we do know is wrong. How very small we are in the big picture.

I wonder if those little rat bastards grow horns.

I wonder if those little rat bastards grow horns.

In other respects, however, they have primitive features, closer to nonruminants such as pigs. All species in the family lack antlers and horns, but both sexes have elongated canine teeth. These are especially prominent in males, where they project out on either side of the lower jaw, and are used in fights.