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An antler on a red deer stag. Velvet covers a growing antler, providing blood flow that supplies oxygen and nutrients. Each antler grows from an attachment point on the skull called a pedicle. While an antler is growing, it is covered with highly vascular skin called velvet, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. [6]
Deer grow antlers to compete for mates and protect their territory during rutting season. The growth and loss of antlers for most species of deer coincide closely with rutting season.
Velvet antler is the whole cartilaginous antler in a precalcified growth stage of the Cervidae family including the species of deer such as elk, moose, and caribou. Velvet antler is covered in a hairy, velvet-like "skin" known as velvet and its tines are rounded, because the antler has not calcified or finished developing.
A gilded wooden figurine of a deer from the Pazyryk burials, 5th century BC. Deer have significant roles in the mythology of various peoples located all over the world, such as object of worship, the incarnation of deities, the object of heroic quests and deeds, or as magical disguise or enchantment/curse for princesses and princes in many folk and fairy tales.
Reindeer have more prominent and denser antlers than whitetail deer. However, the critical difference is in sexual dimorphism. Female reindeer have antlers, while female whitetail deer don’t.
Reindeer antlers can be fashioned into all kinds of tools, including knife handles, shovels, and drying racks. Each part of the antler seems to have its own particular use in some cultures.
A deer (pl.: deer) or true deer is a hoofed ruminant ungulate of the family Cervidae (informally the deer family).Cervidae is divided into subfamilies Cervinae (which includes, among others, muntjac, elk (wapiti), red deer, and fallow deer) and Capreolinae (which includes, among others reindeer (caribou), white-tailed deer, roe deer, and moose).
Antlers of Caspian red deer carry large bez tines and form less-developed cups than western European red deer, their antlers are thus more like the "throw back" top tines of the North American elk (C. canadensis), known as maraloid characteristics. A stag can (exceptionally) have antlers with no tines, and is then known as a switch.