Why do deer shed their antlers? Could you just walk up to a deer and take their antler off without hurting them?
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Antlers are some of the weirdest biological structures.
Anyway, antlers grow every year. They are covered in velvet, a fleshy tissue that encases the growing bone of the antlers. The velvet is shed, leaving dead, exposed bone. That’s the final antler that deer use to spar with each other. After the mating season is over, these antlers are shed.
So why shed antlers? Well, young deer can’t grow very impressive antlers compared to big, mature deer. But antlers are dead tissue, they can’t grow anymore after they are grown. If deer didn’t shed their first antlers, they’d be stuck with their original small antlers. By shedding them, they can regrow bigger and better ones the next season.
Now all this is _super weird_. Normal horns are live bone covered with hard keratin. They constantly grow, because they are living tissue, not dead, exposed bone. There’s no need to shed them because they keep growing.
How did deer get their bizarre headgrowths? I don’t think that is actually well understood yet.
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