antler

Horns or antlers eventually functioned to maintain head contact during struggles rather than to bruise, slash, or gore. This stylized fighting, in which the competing males interlock horns or antlers and try to “outwrestle” each other, minimizes the danger of killing an opponent of the same species…

The antlers of deer are not horns. Shed yearly, they are composed entirely of bone, though they bear a velvety epidermal covering during the growth period. They become increasingly branched with age. The “horn” of a rhinoceros is composed of fused, heavily keratinized hairlike epidermis. Horns…

Antlers, which are characteristic features of the deer family, are not integumentary derivatives at all. Fully developed antlers are solid bone, without any epidermal covering. The young antlers, however, are covered with skin having a velvety appearance. When the antler is fully developed, the drier…

…is the annual replacement of antlers in deer. These remarkable structures, which normally grow on the heads of male deer, consist of an inner core of bone enveloped by a layer of skin and nourished by a copious blood supply. During the growing season the antlers elongate by the proliferation…

…era of wood, horn (antler), and bone. These three materials, all softer than rock but nevertheless intractable, could not be worked successfully without the aid of harder rock tools, such as serrated blades and gravers, or burins, small scrapers with either pointed or narrow, chisel-like ends. Bone was a…

antlers as part of hormonal changes linked to their survival and mating season. In all but one species of deer, males carry antlers; in the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), both sexes carry antlers. Antlers are not permanent appendages; they are shed and regrown annually. As the…

…species of deer, males carry antlers; in the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), both sexes carry antlers. The single antlerless form, the Chinese water deer (Hydropotes inermis), reflects an earlier pre-antler condition, as is shown by the fossil record. In this primitive condition males have long, sharp upper canines, called tusks, that…

…the very high demands of antler growth for minerals, protein, and energy. Antlers are “bone horns” that are grown and shed annually. The growing antlers are encased in “velvet,” a highly vascularized, nerve-filled skin covered by short, soft hairs. The blood-engorged, growing antlers are warm to the touch and quite…

…and the immense, wide, flat antlers of old bulls. The name moose is common in North America; it is derived from the word moosh (“stripper and eater of bark”) in the Algonquian language of the Innu people of Quebec, Canada. In Europe moose are called elk.

The antlers are shed of the blood-engorged skin called velvet in late August, and the bulls are in rut by the first week of September. Rutting bulls search widely for females, but the bulls may also attract females with the smell of their urine. They paw…

Antlers with up to 44 points can grow to 1.4 metres long in males; this is the only deer species in which females also have antlers.