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Ishliayaq β Nyah
Published: 2012-06-07 06:26:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 363; Favourites: 16; Downloads: 0
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Description
A mid-age elk at an animal conservation center outside of Anchorage, Alaska. Elk aren't really common in the state in the wild, though there are a few places that have them, so they're always a treat to see. This boy here was determined to give me attitude in any way he could.Taken with the Sony Nex-3 with the zoom lens (the only one they actually offer). It hasn't been edited in any way, simply because I don't have photoshop on this computer. XD
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Comments: 9
Wow! I don't know anything about elk. Elks? Elk?
See?
His horns hardly even look real!
Did you get to touch them at all?
They look like they would feel like crushed velvet or something soft and stiff and bristly.
Do all the elks have grey hair or just the older ones?
Those horns look so funny c:
I love his face! I wonder what he's thinking.
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The plural would be elk, yep. 
His antlers are actually covered in a thin, very veiny, layer of skin. It covers the antlers while they grow, and then when they're about done, the scrape it off. It looks a bit awful because the layer of velvet, as it's called, has a lot of blood in it, but it's perfectly normal. He's still pretty young, surely no more than five years old, and they grey in his coat is actually his winter coat that he's still shedding.
Unfortunately I didn't get to touch them, but we got to stand very close. Right on the other side of the fence!
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You're kidding! So it is called velvet... But it's skin? That's extraordinary. You would never know looking at it! c: Wow, I hope it doesn't hurt them scraping it off... Do their horns still look all fluffy afterward or do they turn kind of stiffer looking like deer antlers? That's so lucky that you got to see them so so close though. c:
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It's got fuzz on it, and it's very soft. I don't think it hurts them coming off. I've always been under the impression that it starts to get very itchy and the rub it off on anything they can. Trees, rocks, their own hooves; whatever works. Underneath the velvet they're the hard antlers. All deer that grow antlers have velvet, not just elk. It's just part of the antler growing process.
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All of them? I would never have guessed. c: hehe well, when you describe it that way it sounds very cute. I wish I could see that. I'm going to add that to my bucket list. "find an elk and watch it scrape its antlers" Thank you for sharing. c:
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