Antlers facts for kids

The giant Irish Elk, at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.

Velvet covers a growing antler and provides it with blood, supplying oxygen and nutrients.

Antlers are large, branching structures made of bone. They grow on the heads of deer and similar animals. For most deer, only the males grow antlers. However, both male and female reindeer (also called caribou) grow antlers. The antlers on female reindeer are usually smaller than those on males.

What are Antlers For?

Antlers are special because only deer have them. Long ago, the ancestors of deer had long, pointy teeth called tusks instead of antlers. For most deer today, antlers grew instead of these tusks. But some deer, like the musk deer and water deer, still have tusks and no antlers. The muntjac has both small antlers and tusks.

Antlers are usually found only on male deer. This helps them fight other males to show who is stronger. It also helps them attract females. Female reindeer are the only deer species where females regularly grow antlers. Their antlers are typically smaller than the males'. Sometimes, female deer of other species might grow small antlers. This usually happens if they have higher levels of a hormone called testosterone.

The "horns" of an animal called a pronghorn might look like antlers. But they are not true antlers because they contain a material called keratin. This is the same material your fingernails are made of.

How Antlers Grow

An antler on a red deer stag. Velvet covers a growing antler, providing blood flow that supplies oxygen and nutrients.

When an antler is growing, it is covered with a soft, fuzzy skin called velvet. This velvet has many blood vessels. These vessels bring oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. Antlers grow faster than any other bones in mammals.

Antlers start as soft cartilage. This cartilage then turns into hard bone. Once an antler reaches its full size, the velvet covering falls off. The antler bone then dies. This dead bone structure is the mature antler. After some time, the antlers fall off completely. New antlers will start to grow again the next year.

Growing new antlers every year takes a lot of energy and food. So, big, strong antlers can show other deer that an animal is healthy and good at finding food.

See Also

• Horn (anatomy), a structure similar to antlers, but made of keratin instead of bone

Images for kids

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  Mature red deer stag, Denmark (2009)

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  Red deer at the beginning of the growing season

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  Increasing size of antlers year on year in different European game species, 1891 illustration

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  Reindeer Kebnekaise valley, Sweden (2007)

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  A six-year old moose undergoing domestication at Kostroma Moose Farm

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  Antler phylogenetics

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  A German powder flask made from a red deer antler, c. 1570. Wallace Collection, London (2010)

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  Porcupine caribou

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  A mule deer with relatively large antlers

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  White-tailed deer

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  Pudú

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  Irish elk are now extinct

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  Young red deer, with velvet

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  Fallow deer

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  American elk, or wapiti

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  Sambar deer with thick, forked beams for antlers.

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  Chital

See also

In Spanish: Asta (cuerno) para niños