Horn (anatomy)

This product was added biology to improve the basis of formal and / or substantive deficiencies in quality assurance. This is done to bring the quality of biology articles to an acceptable level. Please help to improve this article! Products are not significantly improved, may optionally be deleted.

Read also the more detailed information in the minimum requirements in biology articles.

Horn called the outgrowth at the top of Bovidae and the rhinos. In a figurative sense, like structures on the bodies of other animals are referred to as " horn ".

The horn in the true sense

The bovids (lat. ' Bovidae '), a family of ruminants, which include antelopes, cattle, sheep and goats are, the horn is a hollow coating over a bone pin. This structure comes off easily and is therefore used both as a container as well as a musical instrument. In contrast, the family of deer (lat. ' Cervidae ' ) carrying antlers.

The rhino horn is a solid, which originate from glued bristles sprouted. It can be as painless cut back like hair or fingernails - a measure that is used in the animal protection because the rhinos are almost exclusively hunted for their horns: A rhino, which the horn was removed, is worthless to poachers.

Function of the horn

It is generally believed that the horn has grown ruminants only for defensive purposes evolutionary.

More horns from horn substance

In birds, for example, the cassowary and many species of hornbills wear a horn on the head or beak; also the spur of chicken birds consists of keratin. This also forms the calluses ( sole bales), hooves, also the scales in mammals ( pangolins etc. ), birds and reptiles ( turtles, snakes, etc. ), but not in fish, as well as the tongue spikes in the feline species, the horny teeth of the platypus, the lampreys, etc., which baleen whale species some, the plates on the tongue, in the mouth and in the stomach of birds and some mammals.

As morbid appearances skin horns and horn-like formations in horses, cats, wolves, geese, ducks and chickens are considered.

The horn in the phrase

The phrase " put someone horns " has to do with the fact that the capons cut from the feet spores were einpfropft by a wound to the head, where they not only einwuchsen circumstances, but should be even greater, as they become at the feet would be: At the " horns " you could see the castrated rooster.

Outgrowths from other body substances

The hunter in the language referred to as " horns " antlers of the deer is made of solid bone and therefore is not considered a horn, nor the " horn " of the narwhal, which is rather a tusk.

Also in other animal groups, such as some beetles, one speaks of horns for analog extensions; in insects they are formed as part of the exoskeleton made ​​of chitin.

Horn on behalf

Creatures usually get the additional horn when they are characterized in the skin either by sharp hard growths on the head or by the possession of very hard substances:

• Hornbill
• Hornwort
• Hornfrosch
• Horn flies
• Garfish
• Fenugreek
• Horn corals
• Oribatids
• Bovidae
• Horned viper - the name for some, not necessarily more closely related snake species
• Moon horn beetle
• Rhino
• Rhinoceros beetle
• Triceratops, that is, " Three-horned face"
• And the legendary unicorn