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Show li I! Deer Antlers More Than Just Dressing , i: J They may look like excess bag- gage, but nature has adorned most .! male deer with antlers for a very j I good reason according to Ranger jj j Rick in Nature Magazine. J ' They're handy as weapons in the f ' mating season, serve as "air condi- i ' tioners" in hot weather and provide j nourishment for other animals after i; : they're shed. ; Antlers begin to grow in early J' ! spring, starting as soft, swollen I pads on the skull, and lengthening I into club-like structures the Na- tional Wildlife Federation monthly I reports. While growing, antlers are I covered with a soft, brown-haired I skin called "velvet." Right under this skin are many liny blood ves- , sels that carry food and minerals to i the growing antlers. ! While the antlers are in velvet, ! ; they can be hurt very easily. A male deer in velvet is careful to ; jump out of the way of low-hang- j ing branches. If an antler is knocked , ' against a tree during the velvet i stage it will bleed. ! : Within four and one-half months ': or so, the antlers are full-sized. On the moose, full-sized can measure more than seven feet wide from tip to lip, and a weight of more than 45 pounds. They attain these impressive im-pressive proportions in just three to four months, making them the fastest-growing tissue known. During mating, or rutting, season sea-son a buck uses his antlers to fight other males. With a quick lunge, one male will attack a rival head-on and lock antlers. After a few minutes min-utes of punching and shoving, during dur-ing which pieces of antlers may be broken, the weaker male will usually usu-ally retreat, leaving the victor to mate with the female deer in his territory. Heavy as they are, antlers are helpful during hot weather. During the summer when a buck's antlers arc growing, they act as an air conditioner con-ditioner to help get rid of extra body heat. At full size, antlers harden beneath be-neath their velvet and the blood supply stops. The dead and dry velvet vel-vet peels off in strips, aided by the buck's rubbing against trees and bushes. The antlers are now bone-hard, bone-hard, with furrowed base and pointed tines, ready for the challenges chal-lenges of the mating season. When the mating is over, the antlers suddenly drop from a buck's head, leaving only a pair of bony bases from which next year's set of antlers will grow. They cycle is the same with all of the more than 50 kinds of deer in the world exceni .h Malayan musk deer J long curved teeth in 1,1:1 k , from their enc2lP |
