![]() 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. To sustain its antlers' growth, the elk requires huge amounts of energy and. ![]() Male deer and other cervids grow antlers to attract mates. These shed and regrow each year, and develop very quickly in just a few months. Velvet is the outside covering of the antler during the growing period. Among animals that grow antlers, only the males grow the appendages, again with one exception - both male and female caribous have antlers. Velvet antler is the blood filled collagenous matrix that forms the rapidly growing antler structure. 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. But that's nothing compared to elk and moose. Younger bulls shed and begin growth later. Elk regrow their antlers every year, with the antlers becoming bigger and better, as more time is provided for their growth. Only healthy males can produce the largest antlers. Elk antlers in mature bulls begin to regrow as soon as they are cast in February or March. ![]() A white-tailed deer's antlers can grow as much as a quarter-inch per day, according to Popular Science. Antler size is an indication of male health because antlers take a considerable amount of resources to produce and carry. They are one of the fastest-growing tissues in all of the animal kingdom. In reality, that's not too far from the truth.Īntlers, which are made of bone, grow quickly. It sometimes seems as if white-tailed deer grow antlers overnight.
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