this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
315 points (97.0% liked)
196
17237 readers
3256 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
Other rules
Behavior rules:
- No bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc…)
- No genocide denial
- No support for authoritarian behaviour (incl. Tankies)
- No namecalling
- Accounts from lemmygrad.ml, threads.net, or hexbear.net are held to higher standards
- Other things seen as cleary bad
Posting rules:
- No AI generated content (DALL-E etc…)
- No advertisements
- No gore / violence
- Mutual aid posts require verification from the mods first
NSFW: NSFW content is permitted but it must be tagged and have content warnings. Anything that doesn't adhere to this will be removed. Content warnings should be added like: [penis], [explicit description of sex]. Non-sexualized breasts of any gender are not considered inappropriate and therefore do not need to be blurred/tagged.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on our matrix channel or email.
Other 196's:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you've ever seen the skull of a horned animal versus an antlered animal the difference between antler and horn is pretty clear. The center of a horned animals horn is bone and forms a single continuous piece connected to the skull, surrounded by flesh and hard keratin (like finger nails). Antlers grow more like a knuckle, not connected to the skull as one continuous piece.
Another horned oddity is the rhino, whose "horn" is more like a specialized fingernail (keratin again) than a true horn. A rhino "horn" is like a compressed lock of hair filed to a point, a hair shiv if you will.
Yet another weird horn like thing is the giraffe. They have bone knobby lumps on their head that are like something between a horn and an antler, being bone fused to the skull surrounded by flesh but without keratin.
Then there are narwhals. I don't know anything about narwhals. But they are cool and have "horns".
The narwhal's horn isn't a horn but a tooth.
Evolution is fascinating, all these species reinvented the same tool using different parts of the anatomy.
Some have 2, others have 0. Is a narwhal really a narwhal without its tusk(s)?