Discussion 185 



In this connection, reference to hermaphrodite deer may be of interest. 

 Hermaphrodites are very prevalent in Capreolus, the European roe 

 deer (Rorig, 1899; 1907) and in Odocoileus, the white-tail and mule deer 

 of North America (Wislocki, 1954; 1956). Besides occasional true 

 hermaphrodites and pseudohermaphrodites, which invariably possess 

 fairly well-developed antlers associated with minute, atrophic, intra- 

 abdominal testes or ovotestes, there is a relatively large number of deer 

 with normal female genital tracts, which have nothing abnormal about 

 them except that they possess small, deformed antlers which are often 

 permanently in velvet. These animals usually appear to have been 

 pregnant and they are often lactating. I should infer from this that, 

 during the course of pregnancy, either the ovaries and /or the adrenals 

 had produced ketosteroids capable of stimulating the formation of 

 rudimentary antlers. The possibilities that such antlers may be induced 

 by the activity of progesterone or an androgen have been discussed 

 (Wislocki, 1954, with literature). 



Strauss: Prof. Wislocki, you said that the antler bone is softer than 

 the normal bone, does it depend upon the phosphorus content of the 

 antler bone ? 



Wislocki: It is well known to naturalists that the antlers of deer are 

 much softer than their skeletons. This is probably due to the fact that 

 the bone is rapidly laid down and does not undergo the repeated internal 

 reorganization which occurs in the skeleton. In dead deer, in the open, 

 the antlers weather much faster than the skeleton and they are the first 

 bones to be gnawed away and destroyed by small animals. 



Strauss: You showed us nearly-closed arteries at the casting off of the 

 antlers, are these "polster" arteries? 



Wislocki: Well, as to whether the arteries of the velvet of growing 

 antlers resemble what, in German, are called "Polsterarterien", I should 

 reply no. The arteries of the velvet resemble structurally most nearly, 

 I believe, the umbilical arteries. They are thick-walled, cylindrical and 

 capable of constriction so as nearly to obliterate the lumen. The largest 

 arteries appear to have a broad inner, circular coat and an outer, 

 longitudinal one, but in the smaller vessels, the coats are not so sharply 

 defined. There is no inner or outer elastic membrane. Instead, elastic 

 fibres and argyrophilic reticular fibres interweave in a dense network 

 around the smooth muscle cells (cf. Wislocki and Singer, 1946, Plate 2). 



Boyd: I would like to ask about the method of denervation in these 

 antlers. It seems to me a little curious that it was only sensory fibres 

 that grew into the antlers and I wondered if it was really established 

 that the regenerated nerves included only sensory fibres. 



Wislocki: I don't know too much about the nerve fibres. I stimulated 

 the velvet of a tame, white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) with a 

 needle and an electric current and learned that the antlers were sensitive 

 to these stimuli. I assumed that these responses were related to the 

 nerve fascicles observed in histological sections of the velvet (Wislocki 

 and Singer, 1946). A recent investigator (Vacek, 1955) supplies more 

 information on the innervation of the stag (Cervus elaphus) and the 

 fallow buck (Dama dama). According to him, sebaceous and apocrine 



