Richard Collins: Are Irish red deer starting to shed antlers?
Edwin Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen, the ‘biscuit-tin image of Scotland’, shows a royal stag with 12 points, or tines, on its antlers.
Imperial stags have 14 tines. Monarchs have 16. A 17-tine individual was recorded on Exmoor in 2011.
The black stag, depicted in Lascaux Cave 19,000 years ago, has 18.
Despite the huge amounts of food needed to develop them, antlers are shed, and a new pair grown, annually. What a waste!
Most antelopes keep their horns, why don’t deer do so? A paper just published has an interesting take on this.
Male peacocks grow beautiful tails just to impress females. Antlers, likewise, are a fashion accessory.
Long ago, hinds developed a fetish for antlers and favoured males sporting the best ones during the annual rut.
This led to ‘runaway selection’, antler size becoming the measure of a potential stud’s worth.
Antlers evolved as weapons, but large ones are more of a hindrance than a help.
Smaller, less unwieldy, headgear would surely be more effective as a deterrent and carrying huge cumbersome appendages is a burden.
Were the antlers of giant Irish deer becoming entangled in trees and scrub as the environment changed in a warming world?
Was this a factor in the animal’s demise, all those millennia ago?
Since large antlers are not really useful, it makes sense to get rid of them after the rut.
Losing them, not only makes a deer’s life easier, it provides a head-start in growing new ones, ensuring that they are as large as possible in the coming challenge.
The famous red deer of Killarney, Co Kerry, have a larger American cousin, known to native people as the wapiti.
Whether is should be deemed a distinct species, rather than a sub-species with our one, is disputed.
Wapitis, the noblest and most awe-inspiring deer I ever encountered, used walk past my tent in the Rockies, ignoring me and my campfire. Wolves, their great enemies, howled at night.
America’s other giant deer, the moose, drops its antlers at the beginning of December.
Oddly, wapiti are slow to shed theirs; keeping them until the end of winter.
Zoologist Matthew Metz and colleagues from the University of Montana and the National Park Service think they know why.
Their research has revealed hidden tradeoffs in antler dumping.
Analysing data collected over 13 years at Yellowstone National Park, they found that wolves attack deer which have shed their antlers, far more frequently than those retaining them.
In a group of males, those without horns will invariably be targeted.
Comparatively weak stags are spared, provided they have antlers, at the expense of stronger ones which have dropped theirs; wolves find it less dangerous to attack hornless deer than armed ones.
Holding on to antlers after the mating season, therefore, has survival value; it discourages wolf attacks.
Although a stag shedding them early stands a better chance of mating, he runs the gauntlet of wolves.
Not surprisingly, young stags with no prospect of competing with older males in the rut, are the last to shed theirs.
Our red deer need not worry about wolves; we exterminated these predators centuries ago.
Stags here could afford to drop their antlers at the end of the rut.
After two centuries without a threat from wolves, are Irish red deer beginning to do so?
