Other differences include the colour of the tail and having a wider upper end of the nasal bones than European fallow deer.

[8] Before the Neolithic era, as humans first began to colonise Europe, Persian fallow deer were found in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia.

Despite having cows, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs and cats, it is thought the prehistoric Cypriots managed the deer herds in some way for the next millennia, or may even have domesticated the animal.

They occurred in significant numbers at the aceramic Neolithic sites of throughout Cyprus,[12][13] such as Khirokitia, Kalavasos-Tenta, Cap Andreas Kastros, and Ais Yiorkis,[citation needed] and were important through the Cypriot Bronze Age.

In 1978, Israeli conservationists carried some of the captive fallow deer out of Iran and to Israel for safekeeping in Carmel Hai-Bar Nature Reserve and Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.

[15] The Persian fallow deer is a grazing herbivore, with grass comprising 60% of its diet along with leaves and nuts.

Older male deer are more territorial than younger males; however, older females stay closer to the site within an average of 0.9 km (0.56 mi) where they were reintroduced, while younger females migrate an average of 2.3 km (1.4 mi) away from release site.

[8] Spotted hyenas also heavily preyed upon Persian fallow deer during the Late Pleistocene, before their disappearance from the Middle East.

[16] It is thought that the main reason for the decline of Persian fallow deer has been human hunting, beginning since the early Neolithic era.

[1] Interspecific competition with domestic livestock, human encroachment and habitat destruction for agriculture may also have contributed to their lowered numbers,[1][17] as only around 10% of their former range still exists for habitation.

[8] Historically, when their numbers were higher, Anatolian leopards and Syrian brown bears may have been predators of Persian fallow deer.

Although 1,100 individuals as of 2015 means that the taxon no longer qualifies as 'endangered', the IUCN argues that only wild and mature animals in Israel count (300), and subtracts 50 from this number because it claims they may not be viably mature, and thus is still able to claim less than 250 animals exist, which then makes the taxon eligible for criterion D of the IUCN conservation status standards for 'endangered'.

[1] This is the opposite of the situation a few years earlier, when the IUCN claimed that because there was a possibility that the Israeli population may have somehow become hybridised with European fallow deer, only the population in Iran should count as 'Persian fallow deer', and was thereby able to claim the species met the requirements for criterion D and could be called 'endangered'.

Without a male, a number of hybrids with the European fallow deer were born in Opel Zoo, all seven of these were sent to Dasht-e Naz back in Iran in 1973.

[1] As of 2020 Israel Nature and Parks Authority estimates that some 200 to 300 live in the wild in the northern Galilee area, between 90 and 100 in the Judean Hills and somewhat lower numbers on Mount Carmel.

[1] The captive population in Australia and New Zealand are hybrids created by importing sperm from Mesopotamian bucks and artificially inseminating normal fallow does.

[24] In 1996, after breeding a stock 150 animals, Israel's Nature Reserves Authority began reintroducing the deer in the wild.

A dozen deer were transferred every six months or so to an enclosed acclimatization area located in the reserve at Nahal Kziv in the Western Galilee.

[8] The maximum sustainable yield, the greatest number of individuals that can be removed from the breeding pool to maximize the reintroduced population's size while allowing the breeding core to recover between each reintroduction event, was calculated by Saltz, and the projected population growth after reintroduction was modelled.

[19] Persian fallow deer bred at the more busy Jerusalem Zoo were more likely to be killed, displayed less antipredator behaviour, and spent more time in the open: all twelve released animals from this facility were dead within 200 days.

Several possible causes exist for this reduction in survivorship soon after an individual is released into the wild, including the stress induced by releasing captive individuals into the wild and the reduced success of inexperienced mothers attempting to raise their first young in an unfamiliar habitat.