{"id":17908,"date":"2013-08-28T05:20:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T11:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17908"},"modified":"2013-08-28T05:20:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T11:20:27","slug":"odd-growths-on-the-face-of-a-pronghorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/28\/odd-growths-on-the-face-of-a-pronghorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Odd Growths On The Face Of A Pronghorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month\u00a0we encountered an unusual male Pronghorn on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"pronghorn<\/a><\/p>\n

It came unusually close to us as it browsed and at\u00a0 first we didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary but closer inspection through our lenses revealed something that caught our attention – this animal had two strange-looking projections apparently growing out of the top of its muzzle. .<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"pronghorn<\/a><\/p>\n

They appear to be inflexible, hard and positioned very near the midline (in a front view, the lower growth is about dead center while the top one is slightly to the left of the midline).\u00a0 I considered the possibility that they were clumps of hair that had become matted with some kind of foreign substance and then somehow twisted into strange-looking projections but when I looked closely at the images I rejected that possibility.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"pronghorn<\/a><\/p>\n

The projections seem too solid, rigid\u00a0and shiny to be matted, twisted hair.<\/p>\n

To my eye they appear to be keratinous growths similar in composition\u00a0to horns.\u00a0 A little internet research\u00a0turned up a few\u00a0unscientific references (from places such as taxidermy forums) which note accounts of Pronghorn with very short\u00a0“extra horns” that can grow “most anywhere on their heads”.<\/p>\n

I have no idea how reliable these “extra horn” references are but I can’t come up with a more reasonable explanation for these “growths”.<\/p>\n

This was another one of those days when we remarked to each other as we headed for home – “you just never know what you’re going to see on the\u00a0island!”.\u00a0\u00a0 What an amazing place.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month we encountered an unusual male Pronghorn on Antelope Island. Close inspection through our lenses revealed something that caught our attention – this animal had two strange-looking projections apparently growing out of the top of its muzzle. .<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,334,373],"tags":[31,402,1627,682,211,258,311],"class_list":["post-17908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-pronghorns","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-antilocapra-americana","tag-extra-horn","tag-keratin","tag-male","tag-pronghorn","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/pronghorn-6378-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4EQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}