Photo/Illutration Students on a school trip observe the deer at Kofukuji temple in Nara Prefecture on May 8, 2018. (Sayuri Ide)

NARA--Deer in Nara Park that are a popular tourist draw have highly distinctive genes that have been preserved for more than 1,000 years, Japanese researchers have reported. 

The government has designated the deer in the park in Nara Prefecture as a natural monument. Tourists feeding rice crackers to the deer is a common sight.

A team of scientists from Fukushima University, Yamagata University and the Nara University of Education sought to discover how human activities have impacted the population of the wild animals there and published the findings in an international academic journal. 

They chose the Kii Peninsula because historical materials dating to ancient times can still be found in the Kinki region, where the peninsula is located. 

The researchers analyzed the characteristics of the deer’s genes using blood samples and other materials collected from 294 deer across 30 sites in eight areas in the peninsula between 2000 and 2016.

They found the deer were divided into three groups: those in the eastern part of the peninsula, the western part and in Nara Park.

The team then analyzed when each group was separated from their common ancestors from the Kii Peninsula based on how frequently their genes mutated.

Deer in Nara Park were separated from the three groups’ common ancestors around 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, most likely around 1,400 years ago.

This is scientific evidence that the deer in Nara Park were protected from other groups of deer since more than 1,000 years ago, preserving their own gene characteristics, the scientists said.

They also found that the deer in the western part of the peninsula were separated from the deer in the eastern part in around the 16th century.

The thesis is on the website for the Journal of Mammalogy, an academic journal of the American Society of Mammalogists, at (https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyac120).

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