Tough Yet Stiff Deer Antler is Materials Scientist's Dream

Material Scientists have been searching for something that can be tough, but also stiff. The answer may be in the antlers of Red Deer.

Curious to find out whether red deer are wet or dry when duelling, and how this affects the antler's mechanical properties, John Currey from the University of York, UK, headed south to La Mancha to meet with a colleague of his named Tomas Landete-Castillejos at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. They gathered samples of Red Deer antlers and tested how wet the antlers were and found that the antlers lost 8% of their weight during the time stags began to duel. During other times of the year, the antlers lost 1% of their weight. This discovery meant that antlers were dry when stags began to duel.

Even when most bones are inflexible and brittle when dry, Curry and Landete-Castillejos found that dry antlers were almost as stiff as wet bone. Curry discovered that the tissue of the antler was tough and was 2.4 times tougher than normal wet bone. He also found that the dry antler could survive impacts 6 times greater than the impacts that shattered wet femur. It was concluded that dry antler was tougher than wet bone.

This is important because this concept of Red Deer antlers being both tough and stiff could be used in the future to develop a material that exhibits both tough and stiff properties for application in biomaterials. This could lead to medical devices that can last longer in the human body and undergo more stress from forces within the body.

The article can be accessed at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091127101036.htm