You’d be forgiven if you thought this was a unicorn. And indeed, a deer shot near Celje, Slovenia, in August had only one horn, er, antler, growing right in the middle of its head. Boštjan Pokorny examined the remains and said he’s never seen anything like it.
"In this species, only males grow antlers, which are bilateral and usually symmetrical bone structures that appear from two antler pedicles, i.e. extensions of the skull," Pokorny, assistant director of the ecological research institute ERICo Velenje, said in an email.
"However, in the case of this very untypical and interesting buck, both pedicles, which should be separated, grew up together in one large pedicle."
That could have been caused by an injury to the deer while the antlers were just beginning to develop. Could an animal like this have been the origin of the unicorn legend? Read more about it at National Geographic News. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Eva Klevska, National Geographic - Slovenia)