The pronghorn in the photo, which was posted in an outdoors social media group, has a really unusual look because the horn sheaths that are normally shed each year didn’t fall off like they should, so they stayed wrapped around the permanent horn cores — a rare but cool quirk on an already impressive “speed goat.” Pronghorns aren’t true antelope even though people call them that; they belong to their own family and are the only horned mammals that shed and regrow the outer keratin horn sheaths annually, usually in late fall or winter, leaving the bony core behind in the meantime,, according to Cool Green Science. Those sheaths are made of keratin, which is the same stuff as our fingernails, and normally slide off as a new one grows underneath. The result, like what you see here, is a pretty memorable reminder of just how unique pronghorn horns really are!
