Ujjain, Oct. 23: The cheetal, the iconically timid Indian spotted deer (in picture), scripted a bloody chapter in Madhya Pradesh’s zoological history today with 10 of them goring one another to death in a fight triggered by sexual frenzy.

The mayhem took place in a cramped enclosure at Vikram Vatika, a private zoo at the state-run Vikram University, when nine females vying for the lone male’s affections got into a scrap.

The post-mortem revealed antler wounds on many of the 10 bodies, forest department sub-divisional officer D.C. Vyas said. Antlers are the large, branched horns that stags (adult male deer) possess.

Veterinarian P.D. Trivedi said this is the mating season for cheetals, when it is not uncommon for the animals to get into a fight. But they seldom cause grievous injury to one another.

The spotted deer’s mating season, however, isn’t well defined and varies across the country. The species breeds every six months, the litter made up of a single fawn.

The chief conservator of forests, A.K. Bisaria, said the lack of enough space at the zoo might be to blame. “We had conveyed a message in this regard to the zoo management, but to no avail.”

The university authorities had a decade ago handed Vikram Vatika over to Ujjain Municipal Corporation, which had leased it out to a private company, the Indore-based Bhadoria Group, for 25 years.

Sources said the zoo, which has over 50 cheetals, is no stranger to controversy. A neelgai — an antelope — had died under mysterious circumstances two months ago.

Madhya Pradesh has a fairly large population of cheetals and barasinghas (swamp deer). When Uma Bharti was chief minister, she had thought of replacing the swamp deer with the cow as the state animal, but the move was shelved.

The swamp deer population has been dwindling. Even the band of 400 in the Kanha National Park is getting depleted. The reasons are loss of habitat, poaching and shooting for crop protection.

The cheetal is easily identified by its beautiful, golden-brown coat, decorated with big white spots. An average stag is about 85-90 cm tall at its shoulder, and weighs 80 kg.

Wildlife enthusiasts say the animals are social and live under a unique vigilance system in which the entire herd — which can have hundreds of members — takes part. The weak and the sick form the periphery of the herd while the fawns and their mothers remain near the centre.