The antlers – not the horns – make up a structure made up only of bone that is perishable, because every year it falls (but not at the same time, first one antler falls and then the other) and grows again. It is a characteristic unique to males and the speed at which they grow in size makes it the fastest growing bone among mammals.
Now, a team of scientists from Queen Mary University of London (United Kingdom) has discovered the secret behind the hardness of deer, reindeer or elk antlers and how they can resist without breaking during fights, as they absorb large amounts of energy during male-male combat without cracking.
What makes them so tough? The experts examined the structure of the antler at the nanometric level (on a scale almost one thousandth of the thickness of a hair strand) and were able to identify the mechanisms behind this super force: the location of the fibers that make up the antler, staggered rather than aligned, it makes the resulting substance stronger.
“ The fibers that make up the antlers are staggered instead of aligned , which allows them to absorb the energy of the impact of a collision during a fight “ , clarifies Paolino De Falco, leader of the work.
This finding opens up interesting possibilities for the creation of a new generation of materials with greater resistance to damage, such as in the field of prosthetics or even in the construction of buildings.
“ Our next step is to create a 3D printed model with fibers arranged in a staggered configuration and held together by an elastic interface. The goal is to prove that additive manufacturing can be used to create damage-resistant composites , ” said Ettore Barbieri, co-author of the investigation.
The study has been published in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering ,
