Does any one know how strong / durable antlers are, compared with horns and tusks? For some reason, a deer’s antlers just seem inherently more fragile-looking to me than, say, a cow’s horns or an elephant’s tusks. Or a rhino’s horn, for that matter.
Just curious. Any information would be appreciated.
Antler is very tough and strong - in many species, its purpose is to be bashed against other antlers very hard as males compete for breeding dominance.
Antler has been used for tools such as picks for mining in soft rock such as chalk and limestone, and for making tools where durability and strength is key - such as pressure-flakers for working flint blades.
I don’t have any data on comparative strength of antler vs ivory etc - but it’s stronger than bone.
Mature deer antlers are quite hard, almost like bone but not marrow filled. During the ‘velvet’ stage when the antlers are still growing they are covered in a thin skin of velvet with blood vessels that feed the growing bone. At this stage they are very sensitive.
A month or so before the rutting/breeding season the antlers reach a point of maturity and the velvet begins to die. This causes the antlers to itch and the deer begin to scrape off the velvet against trees and shrubs. This also is part of the mating behavior and these ‘rubs’ become territorial markers for other buck deer.
During the rut deer will spar with each other to determine dominance, who gets to mate with who, by locking their antlers in mostly harmless mock battles. So they need to be and are very hard, not as dense as ivory, but at least as, or stronger than bone.
Deer, elk, and moose shed their antlers each winter and re-grow new ones that become mature in time for the next mating season, which is usually in the fall. Most of these shed antlers are eaten by rodents so that is why you don’t see them just lying around.
Cow horns, elephant tusks and rhino horns are not shed and are not antlers.
The expected wiki link:
That, and elephant tusks are made of ivory (like teeth) and rhino horns are made of keratin (like fingernails).
I’ve always wondered what would happen if you took similar masses of tusk, horn, keratin, and antler, and banged them together. Which would prove to be strongest?
(I’m kind of odd like that…)
Knife collector and bladeforum.com poster for more than 10 years now. Antler is more brittle and prone to cracking while horn shrinks and warps in time. As a utility knife, the horn is superior (IMHO) because of its yield and also because bloody gunk makes it actually grippier. I experimented using cow’s blood. Here in the Philippines, farmers press small wounds onto an ox’s horn to stanch the bleeding.
I think the reason antlers look more fragile is that antlers are generally narrower than tusks and horns.
Yes, that’s it.
You hear of cases where two antlered bucks in rut will suffer the misfortune of having their antlers lock together as they tussle. With deer weighing from 150 up to 400 lbs, the antlers don’t break although subject to violent compression and tension. That’s pretty durable. Elk of course have racks that dwarf those of deer or caribou and their weight is astonishing.
This makes me wonder about the upkeep of “antler arches” that I’ve seen in places like Jackson and Afton.
Yes, that would definitely qualify as durable!
Well, I didn’t actually think that they were actually fragile; it is just that other “fearsome animal projections” like bull’s horns and elephant tusks look far more durable to me than antlers. Probably because they are more massive.
Yeah, they are. We’re not implying antlers are indestructable, it’s common to see small damage they’ve incurred from battering like the loss of a brow tine(s). But then you see that with elephant (ivory), bull horn, antelope and rhino (matted hair), etc. They’re all being hit by something of identical durability.
By “upkeep” do you mean mitigating the effects of weathering? I have a set of huge elk antlers I purchased in an antique store that came from Wyoming in the 50s, so they’re 65 y.o., give or take. They’re unweathered in that they’ve continuously been inside since they were harvested and they have retained both the rust brown color and their appreciable weight. Conversely, I’ve come across a number of sheds in the wild and they’ve both leached white and they probably only weigh about 1/4 of their initial weight. As Dallas Jones mentions another thing that happens to sheds in the wild is that they’re foraged upon by critters, some in an attempt to extract their mineral content and by others, squirrels for one, that gnaw on them to sharpen their teeth.
blondebear, this site from 2006 says one of the weathered old arches in Jackson Hole was to be sold ($51,000) and replaced with a new one. Didn’t see anything about "upkeep’ per se beyond just replacing them when they get too old.
Archaeologists found an **antler **that was used as a Neolithic shovel. The antlers were for digging the hole for the body to go in to.
Stonehenge was a Neolithic site as well.
Well, that certainly implies some sturdiness! Interesting!
