What do cows, rams, and giraffes have in common?
Their bony headgear.
From curly horns to pronghorns,
branching antlers to knobby ossicones,
all these mammals have elaborate bones
growing out of their heads.
Kind of strange when you think about it.
Scientists thought it was strange, too .
So they took a closer look at
how these crowning glories grow.
They found that when horns or antlers start to grow,
many of the genes used to create nerve, skin, and bone
during early development were switched on.
The fact that the process was similar
in horns and antlers
suggests that animals with bony head growths
all descend from a common ancestor.
But antlers grow back, year after year.
Unlike our amphibian cousins, most mammals
can’t grow something like a limb on demand.
Antlers aren’t simply bone—they’re covered in skin
and laced with delicate nerves.
And they grow really fast.
We’re talking 30 kg of antler in less than a year.
This fast, complicated tissue growth
that regenerates year after year
has caught the attention of tissue engineers
—people looking to regrow human limbs.
When scientists examined
deer during the antler-growing season,
they found that an unusual set of genes come to life—
some of the genes turned on in a cell
destined to become an antler
are associated with cancers in humans.
But these beasts don’t have a higher rate of cancer.
In fact, cervids like deer are 5 times less likely
to get cancer than other mammals.
This suggests they’ve found a way to control
otherwise dangerous cancer pathways—
harnessing fast growth without
the out-of-control proliferation of cancer cells.
Exploring these genes may help scientists
understand cancer growth in the future—
particularly bone cancers like osterocarcinoma.
And tissue engineers can also look at these processes
to further understand how to make prosthesis
or one day regrow limbs.
This is just antlers.
Who knows what horns may have to offer?
You may never look at the cud-chewing,
horn-sporting cow the same way again.
