The velvet then sheds, and the deer try to remove it by rubbing it against trees and other structures. By the time mating season begins in the fall, the velvet is gone and the antlers are a hard, bony material. When the antlers are fully grown, they harden to bone and the velvet is cut off from the deer's blood supply and dies away. ![]() Injuries to the velvet or even another part of the buck's body can cause the antlers to grow abnormally. While the antlers are covered in velvet, deer don't want them to come into contact with anything that could injure or damage them. It's filled with blood vessels that help transport blood, oxygen and essential nutrients to the area, which allow the antlers to grow quickly. The velvet is specialized to help the antlers grow, Popular Science reports. The new antlers are covered by a fuzzy-looking skin called velvet. In the spring, the antlers begin to sprout from the pedicles. Male deer have two spots on their skulls called pedicles from which their antlers grow. Once antlers are shed, the process of growing them begins anew. Bucks also use their antlers to fight other males to show their worth and supremacy to females, Sciencing reports.īut how do their antlers grow so quickly? It requires a lot of energy, and while it may seem like they sprout overnight, antler growth is an almost continuous process. Deer and their relatives grow antlers each spring and shed them every winter. A large set of antlers is proof of the animal's health to potential mates, but that's not all. Male deer and other cervids grow antlers to attract mates. Elk have dark, shaggy necks, while reindeer have stocky with thick necks. Elk are mostly found in Central Eastern Asia, while reindeer are found in colder climates of arctic and sub-arctic Asia. Among animals that grow antlers, only the males grow the appendages, again with one exception - both male and female caribous have antlers. Elk antlers are not covered with velvety fur, but reindeer antlers are covered with it. Elk antlers can grow as much as 1 inch a day, and a moose can add 1 pound of new antler growth every day.Īll animals in the Cervidae family grow antlers with one exception - the Chinese water deer, according to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. that make it useful (adaptive) for deer to cast and regrow antlers each year. ![]() But that's nothing compared to elk and moose. Antler-beam length in North American elk (wapiti) can reach 64 inches (163. A white-tailed deer's antlers can grow as much as a quarter-inch per day, according to Popular Science. They are one of the fastest-growing tissues in all of the animal kingdom. New antlers begin to regrow immediately so that they are ready in time to use as weapons against rival males in the next mating season. In reality, that's not too far from the truth.Īntlers, which are made of bone, grow quickly. Every spring, shed hunters head to the woods looking for deer and elk antlers that may fetch thousands of dollars, or social-media fame. It sometimes seems as if white-tailed deer grow antlers overnight.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |