Problematic character analysis 

However, the Chinese characters of Qilin  and  both carry the Chinese "deer" radical , suggesting that they were conceived of as a deer like animal, or perhaps a kind of antelope.

I have removed this unsourced sentence from the Origins section of the article, for the following reasons:
As the lede states, the characters in qilin can also be written with the "horse" radical 馬 (maybe a more recent, less traditional variant, but this would have to be addressed, and sourced).
The giraffe is also "conceived of as a deer-like animal" in Chinese, in fact even more explicitly than the qilin. The word for "giraffe", 长颈鹿, means "long-necked deer".