Are deer antlers living bone or are they a bit like our nails and hair, which are dead

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A.� Antlers begin as living, solid bone tissue with a honeycombed structure, covered in velvety skin full of blood vessels to feed the bone essential vitamins and minerals as�it grows.

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After�two to�four months, when the antlers have grown and the velvet is no longer needed, a ring forms at the base of the antlers. The ring acts as a valve and cuts off the blood supply to the velvet, which withers, dries up, and falls off.

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Pedicles, or knobbly, skin-covered nubs protruding from the skull, support the deer's antlers, which range in number from one shaft to eleven branches. The pedicles are a permanent fixture on the deer's forehead, and are the point from which the antlers break off annually.

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Q.� How can living bone be shed annually

A.� Without the support of the velvet the antlers become dead bone, which can then be shed after the mating season is over.

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Q.� When do deer start growing antlers

A.� The pedicles appear in the deer's first year. The following year, the young deer sprouts straight, spike-like shafts, and in the third year, the first branch appears. From then on, as the deer matures, his antlers lengthen and, in most species, he acquires additional branches. As the number of branches increases annually, it's possible to age a deer by them.

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Q.� How long does the shedding process take

A.� The entire shedding process only takes two to three weeks to complete, and the re-growth phase takes place over the summer in time for the rutting season.

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Q.� Shedding and re-growing antlers must be physiologically costly, why do it

A.� Stags use their antlers during mating season to fight each other for females and the fights can become very aggressive and consequently the antlers often become damaged. If stags kept the same antlers, becoming progressively more damaged, they wouldn't be as effective at competing for females with each new mating season.

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by Lisa Cardy