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ANTLER, renewal lesson from Mother Nature
Many
animals, including goats, sheep and cattle-have horns. But only a few
species-including deer, elk, moose and caribou have antlers.
Horns
are made of dead skin and are permanent. Antlers are very different;
they are made of living tissue that grows and dies in a yearly cycle.
The tips are called points; the width of the antler is called spread.
The antlers grow every spring; in early winter; they die and fall off.
You can walk through the woods and find them lying on the ground. The
following spring, the antlers grow back again, bigger and with more
points than before. Some people think it's possible to tell how old an
animal is by counting the points of its antlers, but the number of
points does not accurately correspond to the age of the animal.
When
antlers are growing they are covered with a soft, furry layer of
sensitive skin called "velvet". Once the antlers reach full size, the
velvet dries and begins to peel. The animal rubs the dying velvet off
against a tree, leaving the bony core of the antler exposed. That's why
the antlers are worn smoother at the tips than at the base.
Antlers,
which are almost always displayed by the male of the species, are used
to establish dominance during the mating season. but naturalist wonder
about the survival value of antlers that are shed every winter; growing
a huge rack of antlers each year requires a great deal of the animal
energy.
Antlers
are the fastest-growing structures in the animal kingdom. Under a
microscope, growing antler cells are like cells from a cancerous bone
tumor: Scientists think that studying antler cells may help them learn
about regulating human cell growth-and stopping the spread of cancer.
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