Happy Christmas !

Happy Christmas ! I'm spending time with my family and having a great time. Sadly, it's not snowing over here, and we only had about two or three snow days in Scotland so far - I hope we get more, because it's really beautiful near my house when it snows. (Apart from a few winters ago when it got so cold it was -18c one night)

Here's a quick fun fact for Christmas. Rudolph, Santa's reindeer was actually most likely to have been a girl. How do I know this ? It's to do with the timing of when antlers fall off and regrow each year. Both male and female reindeer have antlers (which is unusual for deer - normally it's just males). Anyway, male reindeer's antlers usually fall off before Christmas time, whereas the female's antlers do not, making Rudolph more likely to be a girl (*) !

(*) Scientists tend to try and be very exact about the timings of antlers, but I've found it varies a LOT with roe deer - it depends on age, diet, health and region. I've seen roe deer still in velvet in May, and other roe deer close by with hard antlers by March. Here's my guide anyway.

So why do deer even have antlers ?

When I gave my talk a few weeks ago at Crieff Library I talked about deer antlers, and passed round some shed roe deer antlers for people to look at and feel. At the end, someone asked: "why do deer have antlers anyway ?"

It's a simple question but it's also a difficult question at the same time. There are some obvious answers, but when you look into them, they don't apply to all deer. I've written a lot about antlers before (like explaining how roe deer antlers grow,  when the antlers 'go back' and when they grow strangely) but I've never looked into why they have them in the first place before, and the reason is more interesting than you might think !