One Of Two Facts Amaze Me,

about the Irish Elk, 

the first fact is that the elk (Megaloceros giganteus), which died out about 8,000 years ago, sported the largest antlers of any animal in the world, ever, their antlers could be as big as 12 feet across, which is not a surprise as lets face it, one creature has got to be the biggest, but what does surprise me is that the antlers had to be regrown every year! I know this is normal for elk and deer to grow new antlers yearly, but being so large I thought that they would kept and just grow bigger every year, photograph Smithsonian Institution and story, also this from the museum, as a name, Irish elk is a double misnomer. The animal thrived in Ireland but was not exclusively Irish, ranging across Europe to western Siberia for some 400,000 years during the Pleistocene. Nor was it an elk; it was a giant deer, with no relation to the European elk (Alces alces) or North American elk (Cervus canadensis). The evolution of its most striking feature was driven by sexual selection; no survival advantages derived from such enormous antlers. “It was all about impressing the females,” says Adrian Lister, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London, England, and a leading expert on the species, males of the species were about the size of an Alaskan moose, while females were somewhat smaller and did not grow antlers, the antlers 12 feet across, imagine the resources the animal must have used to grow these throw away fashion accessories every year!