The Red Deer

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The red deer is considered one of the largest deer in the world. It is not familiar to us in the land of Israel, and in fact, it arrived here from afar. Its habitats are forests in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa.

According to archaeozoological findings, it seems that the red deer used to exist in the land of Israel as well, but disappeared around the sixteenth century.

At the end of World War II, Menachem Zaharoni traveled to Austria with a delegation of teachers on an educational mission to refugee camps of Holocaust survivors. While there, he saved the allowance he received for spending money and bought items for the museum: microscopes, minerals, and even a few taxidermies, including the red deer. All of these were added to the nature collection, which was kept in a small hut in the school yard in those days.