Original subtitles

CHARLIE: What's up guys?

Today we're hanging out in Alaska, and talking about animal fashion.

When you think about fashion, a few cities might come to mind, like New York, Milan,

Paris, but, for animals, it's actually right here, in Portage, Alaska,

'cause they've got animal headgear fashion down.

KIRBY: Hey guys, what's up?

CHARLIE: It's time for Weird but True!

Hey guys! Charlie here! You know my sister Kirby.

KIRBY: Hey guys!

CHARLIE: We're so glad that you're here.

KIRBY: Because the coolest thing just happened.

CHARLIE: Alright so Kirby and I were just outside on a hike you know?

Normal day.

When all of the sudden we stumbled across something awesome.

-Whoa!

CHARLIE: Check it out!

KIRBY: An antler!

CHARLIE: A horn!

KIRBY: Wait. CHARLIE: Wait. -What?

KIRBY: I'm pretty sure it's an antler.

CHARLIE: I know it's an antler, but is it also a horn?

KIRBY: Is an antler a kind of horn?

CHARLIE: Or is a horn a kind of antler?

I don't know.

KIRBY: I don't know either.

CHARLIE: So I guess that's what we're doing today.

Unraveling the world of.

-Animal headgear!

CHARLIE: Hey guys, today we're checking out animal headgear.

Looking at antlers and horns and trying to figure out what sets them apart.

KIRBY: Hey Charles.

Check out page 35.

CHARLIE: Ahh this is good.

Alright, so apparently this is an antler.

KIRBY: Whattup!

CHARLIE: Yeah and 100% not a horn.

KIRBY: Kirby's a genius.

CHARLIE: Yeah yeah, whatever, but this clears everything up, and I think I know the perfect

way to explain it.

Hey Kirb I'm feeling a little poetic today, what about you?

KIRBY: Charles, I'm always feeling poetic.

CHARLIE: Alright guys well toss on your black turtlenecks and buckle up buddies!

Welcome to HQ underground, people.

Today we're listening to a selection of prose on the topic.

KIRBY: Horns vs antlers.

CHARLIE: We just learned that there are three differences between horns and antlers.

Which we will describe to you.

Man. In poem form.

KIRBY: Naturally. CHARLIE: Naturally.

KIRBY: Naturally. Difference number one!

Shape!

Oh I can see, count one two three,

these antlers branched just like a tree.

CHARLIE: Many times thick, one spot to prick,

my horn is shaped just like a stick.

Alright. Time for difference number two.

KIRBY: Composition.

Snap your fingers just like that,

antlers are dense more like a bat.

CHARLIE: Antlers are dense and a single structure.

Just like a baseball bat.

While a baseball bat is made entirely of wood.

An antler is made entirely of bone, through and through, that grows right out of the

animal's skull.

Horns, however are different.

They are made up of two parts.

Like a sword and a sheath.

There's a hard core connected to the skull, that would be the sword,

and an outer covering that fits right over it, like a sheath.

That core is pure bone, but the outer sheath part is made out of keratin,

the same material that makes up our hair and fingernails!

KIRBY: Alright, difference number three.

CHARLIE: Lifespan!

KIRBY: It's quite clear, your antlers deer,

will last as long as one school year.

CHARLIE: Antlers start growing in the spring!

In April or May.

Throughout the summer they continue to grow.

They eventually lose their soft velvet, and become hard and bony by the fall.

Finally, in the winter, the antlers are shed.

They fall right off!

Next spring, the process starts all over.

So animals with antlers have to regrow them every single year.

Man the life style of horns is the opposite of antlers.

Cows, muskox, big horns too,

my horns will last a whole life through.

Animals keep their horns throughout the whole year, throughout their whole lives!

Some animal's horns never stop growing!

Wonderful, wonderful.

KIRBY: Charles, this is so easy.

CHARLIE: Oh yeah?

KIRBY: Yeah. Check it out. Antlers.

Branched, bony, temporary.

Horns, unbranched, bone in a keratin sheath, and last forever.

It's easy stuff!

CHARLIE: Alright Kirb, well if you're feeling strong, let's see what you got!

KIRBY: Okay!

CHARLIE: I'm gonna hold up some images of animals and you gotta guess the head gear.

Antler or horn.

Sound good?

KIRBY: I got this.

CHARLIE: Let's do it. First up we've got a moose.

The largest moose headgear measured six feet, nine inches across.

That's more than one Kirby!

KIRBY: Well I know horns aren't branched and antlers are,

so I'm gonna go with antlers for this one.

CHARLIE: Perfect! Number two the alpine ibex.

Male alpine ibex have headgear that can be 55 inches long.

KIRBY: Alright those are looking pretty unbranched to me.

Maybe like a keratin sheath around a bony core!

I'm gonna go with a horn.

CHARLIE: Awesome. Here's a tricky one. The white-tailed deer.

KIRBY: Tricky? Come on man this is what we picked up in the backyard.

-Whoa!

KIRBY: Branched, bony, we're looking at some antlers there.

CHARLIE: Three for three! Speed round. Bison.

KIRBY: Horn. CHARLIE: Elk. KIRBY: Antler.

CHARLIE: Antelope. KIRBY: Horn.

CHARLIE: Markhour. KIRBY: Horn.

CHARLIE: Jackson's Chameleon.

KIRBY: Oooo a lizard! I'm gonna go with horn.

CHARLIE: Giraffe. KIRBY: Horn.

CHARLIE: Wait, uh what? Giraffes don't have horns?

Let's just go with another one.

Pronghorn.

KIRBY: Antler.

CHARLIE: Huh. What? No again. Ummm, rhinoceros. KIRBY: Horn.

CHARLIE: Wait rhinoceroses don't have horns? What's going on here?

KIRBY: How is that possible?

CHARLIE: Yeah, I don't know.

We need like a few minutes and when we come back I'm sure we'll have

it all down alright?

See you in a bit.

KIRBY: Weird but True, antlers can grow up to one inch per day!

That makes them one of the fastest growing types of animal tissue on the planet.

CHARLIE: Remember, antlers are branched, solid bone, and shed every year.

Horns are unbranched, made up of a bony core and keratin sheath,

and last for a lifetime.

So if we look at giraffes, it turns out that these little giraffe things are made out of

cartilage, not bone.

That means they're something different, called ossicones.

So it's true, giraffes, don't have horns.

KIRBY: And rhinos look like they have horns, too, right, there,

but those things are made out of only keratin.

No bony core and no keratin sheath.

So, they're not horns either!

Yeah, rhinos don't have horns.

CHARLIE: Pronghorns have pretty hornlike headgear, but they're actually kind of like

a mashup between an antler and a horn.

The thing is made up of a bony core and a keratin sheath, but it's forked, like an antler.

And they shed the sheath in the fall, also like an antler.

So these aren't really horns, but they aren't really antlers either.

They're just something else entirely.

KIRBY: So it turns out horns and antlers aren't really the end of the story.

CHARLIE: There's a whole lot of other animal headgear out there.

KIRBY: Whoa Charles!

Check this out!

Animal Headgear Fashion Week!

Live! We gotta tune in!

CHARLIE: Welcome everyone to Animal Headgear Fashion Week!

KIRBY: We're broadcasting live from what we've decided is the animal headgear capital

of the world.

-Portage, Alaska!

CHARLIE: I'm Charles.

KIRBY: And I'm Kirby.

CHARLIE: Bringing you the latest styles of headgear making their way across the

runway.

KIRBY: It's sure to be an exciting week.

Isn't it Charles? Let's dive right in!

First up, the tusk runway show.

CHARLIE: You know, Kirb, I was blown away by this year's looks.

Tusks are definitely in this year.

KIRBY: The elephant looked absolutely timeless in its enormous tusks,

simply dazzling the runway.

CHARLIE: Our favorite swimwear look.

-The walrus!

KIRBY: He never disappoints.

CHARLIE: But the real runway show stopper.

The hippo.

KIRBY: Two sets of tusks.

CHARLIE: The perfect complement to its enormous mouth.

KIRBY: The detail! CHARLIE: The accents.

KIRBY: The energy it took to grow those, they work for any occasion.

CHARLIE: Hey you changed the channel!

KIRBY: Super quickly, we gotta talk about tusks!

Tusks are another awesome example of animal headgear.

They kind of look like horns coming out of an animal's mouth,

but they're actually teeth.

Teeth! That just keep on continuously growing.

How weird is that?

Usually they're the canines, but sometimes the incisors, too.

One of the most impressive tusked animals, the north sulawesi babirusa.

CHARLIE: Two sets of tusks.

KIRBY: Yup! the upper and lower canines.

The upper canines grow up and backwards through its nose!

The north sulawesi babirusa, major tusk all-star.

Alright back to fashion week.

Alright up next fresh for fall!

We have our newest bird looks!

CHARLIE: You can dress it up, you can dress it down, but in a bird's ensemble,

the beak takes the crown.

KIRBY: Our favorites in active-wear.

The Australian Pelican.

CHARLIE: Dazzling, simply ravishing.

KIRBY: Functional fashion, a big trend this spring.

CHARLIE: In day wear we were impressed by the toucan.

KIRBY: Bold pops of color.

A nice accent and something new.

CHARLIE: Cool cool.

So beaks, like horns and our fingernails, have a covering made up of keratin.

They keep growing throughout the bird's entire life!

Birds use beaks for all sorts of things.

Let's check out the Rhinoceros Hornbill.

The theory is that it uses this chamber on the top of its beak to amplify its calls.

The Roseate Spoonbill uses its beak to strain tiny little crustaceans out of the water.

And the Shoebill Stork uses its big old bill to chomp on fish.

How weird does this guy look?

Like a goose shoved it's face into a wooden clog!

So weird!

This just about wraps up our coverage for this year's animal headgear fashion week.

KIRBY: All that's left to do is give our lifetime in fashion achievement award.

CHARLIE: This year we're honoring a true visionary.

KIRBY: A surprise choice, the porcupine.

CHARLIE: Timeless. KIRBY: Elegant.

CHARLIE: Ingenious. KIRBY: Inspiring.

CHARLIE: All seem to fall short of describing this fashion mogul.

So yeah, the porcupine comes out of nowhere with the ultimate headgear.

Quills are super stiff prickly pointy hairs made out of keratin that cover their head

and body.

When a porcupine feels threatened his sharp quills stand up and easily detach if

touched.

A brush with this headgear won't soon be forgotten.

So we got horns and antlers.

KIRBY: And now we've got tusks, beaks, and porcupine quills, too.

CHARLIE: Oh my gosh Kirb check it out!

KIRBY: What's up?

CHARLIE: The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center is accepting visitors!

It's in Portage, Alaska!

KIRBY: No way!

We gotta go!

CHARLIE: Alright guys, we gotta pack up a few things, but when we get back we're

gonna head on over to Alaska.

KIRBY: See you in a bit.

Weird But True, their antlers are super heavy, but moose can still run faster than the

fastest human Olympians!

CHARLIE: Oh man this is gonna be so cool! Hey, guys!

KIRBY: Hey!

CHARLIE: You're just in time, we're getting ready to go to Portage, Alaska.

KIRBY: The animal headgear capital of the world.

CHARLIE: To see some awesome headgear.

You ready to go?

Sweet, let's roll.

Time to head up to Alaska.

The last frontier.

The Land of the Midnight Sun.

Purchased by the US in 1867, granted statehood in 1959.

Hey guys we made it.

KIRBY: We're at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

They take in orphaned and injured animals and nurse 'em back to health until they're

good to go.

CHARLIE: Or if they're too injured, provide them with a nice natural home.

I gotta feeling we're gonna see some pretty sweet animal headgear too.

KIRBY: We gotta go talk to someone about this. Let's go.

CHARLIE: Let's go.

Guys, it's Wilson!

KIRBY: He's an animal keeper at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

CHARLIE: So exactly who we need to talk to!

Hi Wilson!

WILSON: Hey guys how's it going?

KIRBY: Wilson's favorite Weird but True fact is, the Triceratops was the last and

largest of the horned dinosaurs!

CHARLIE: Are you an animal headgear expert?

WILSON: Well I grew up here in Alaska so I've seen a lot of animals that carry headgear

around and I'm a Zoologist.

So hopefully I'll be able to answer some questions you guys have.

CHARLIE: Perfect! KIRBY: Awesome.

CHARLIE: You got anything to show us?

WILSON: Oh I got tons to show you guys. Come on let's go check it out.

CHARLIE: Alright let's go guys!

Alright Wilson what are we looking at here man?

WILSON: Before us here we've got kind of a smorgasbord of headgear as you can kind find

on all sorts of animals that are found here in Alaska.

Right here sort of is a centerpiece we do have the skull of a bull reindeer.

So you can see it's.

CHARLIE: This thing is massive. WILSON: Pretty impressive.

KIRBY: Oh yeah. CHARLIE: Holy cow. KIRBY: Oh yeah.

WILSON: Sort of sculpture of bone. KIRBY: Super cool.

WILSON: And then right next to it, is actually the antler of a female reindeer.

KIRBY: It's tiny!

CHARLIE: What are we looking at over here?

WILSON: The uh keratin sheath of a wood bison's horn.

-Ahhh.

CHARLIE: This is what we were talking about earlier in the episode the bony core.

Goes right in here.

WILSON: Fit right up in there.

This is the horn from a female muskox, but you'll notice that they look a lot different from

most horns you think of that kind of.

CHARLIE: Yeah its. WILSON: Go up. KIRBY: Yeah.

WILSON: This kind of upward hook, that's basically for grabbing a predator.

CHARLIE: So you got anything around here that we can see not just some skulls and

antlers here.

WILSON: Well we've got animals like you wouldn't believe.

There's moose here, reindeer, black tail deer, muskox, and you know,

if he's not too busy, and if he's feeling up to it.

You guys might be able to uh meet Snickers one of the porcupines here.

-Oh!

CHARLIE: That sounds awesome. Thanks Wilson!

KIRBY: See you soon. CHARLIE: We'll see you later. WILSON: See you around.

KIRBY: Alaska is so huge the state of Texas could fit inside of it twice!

With all that terrain it's no wonder that it's home to some incredible animals.

The conservation center we're at isn't nearly that big, but it's gonna take some exploring

to find some headgear all-stars around here.

Check it out guys.

We found some elk with crazy impressive antlers.

They can be as tall as four feet, making the elk nine feet tall.

That's like skimming the bottom of the net of a basketball hoop.

Crazy!

But elk are just the beginning of what you can find here.

CHARLIE: What's up guys? We met a new friend over here. This guy's name is Teddy!

He's four years old and he's an adult bull moose and check out those antlers.

Moose antlers, they can be as heavy as 40 pounds, which is about as heavy as a microwave.

So imagine walking around you whole life with a microwave on your head.

That's the life of a bull moose right there.

So Wilson, these antlers look super fuzzy.

What's going on here?

WILSON: So this real, kind of fuzzy looking stuff on it, that's actually a really thin

layer of skin called velvet.

CHARLIE: Skin? WILSON: Mmhm. CHARLIE: Oh.

WILSON: And it's got a lot of kind of blood vessels and nerves in it that's actually

providing nutrients to these growing antlers.

And they'll actually shed that off in the fall once those antlers are fully hardened.

-Mmmm.

CHARLIE: Does it peel off kind of slowly?

WILSON: Kind of like a banana peel. Yeah.

CHARLIE: Kind of like a banana peel?

WILSON: They'll go up to it and they'll sort of rub on brush and.

CHARLIE: It's nice and unraveled.

WILSON: And anything that uh that's getting hard for them and they'll just scrape it

right off.

CHARLIE: No way. So how long does it take 'em to grow the antlers each year?

WILSON: It takes a few months.

Antler, believe it or not is actually the fastest growing animal tissue that we know of.

CHARLIE: Wow. WILSON: In some species, like moose,

it can grow up to an inch a day at the peak of the growing season.

KIRBY: How come Teddy's are so much bigger?

WILSON: There's really kind of three things that contribute to their size.

Age of the animal, which is the case here.

Teddy's four years old, Toke's only one.

-Mmmm.

WILSON: And then, nutrition and genetics.

CHARLIE: So nutrition just how, the better food that they get?

WILSON: Yeah. If they've got better food, just like us,

they'll grow bigger and stronger and that includes their antlers too.

KIRBY: So many cool animals, so many cool antlers!

CHARLIE: But guys, this is the animal headgear capital of the world,

so we're just getting started.

We're gonna scope out the area, look for some more antlers, maybe some horns,

a quill or two and uh we'll see you guys in a few.

There'll be so much more to see alright?

See you soon.

KIRBY: Weird but True, porcupine quills secrete a natural antibiotic,

so if they prick themselves, it heals quickly!

CHARLIE: What's up guys? You made it back! KIRBY: What's up?

CHARLIE: Today we're hanging out in the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center checking

out animals with antlers.

KIRBY: Like our friend Teddy over here.

CHARLIE: But I think there's a bunch more headgear nearby too.

You wanna go check 'em out?

KIRBY: Let's do it.

CHARLIE: Let's roll.

Check it out guys we found another animal with absolutely huge antlers!

This guy is a caribou A.K.A.

a reindeer.

KIRBY: His name is Chuckles.

CHARLIE: Hey Chuckles!

The cool thing about caribou antlers is that they're the one species where both males

and females both have antlers.

Moose, deer, elk, all of the others it's just males, but caribou,

both males and females have 'em.

If you look closely at Chuckle's antlers right here they seem like a nice tangled

mess.

And if you look at, we got we've got a nice strong branch right here and they kind of

fork at the tips.

And these are words that we use to describe antlers a lot, we got branched,

and we got forked.

They seem really similar, but actually they're distinctly different.

So let's check 'em out a little more closely.

Here's the difference between branched and forked antlers.

Branched have one main beam right here, and every so often a tiny little branch shoots

off.

Some antlers are forked, instead of having one main beam,

they split a few times into equal branches.

Branched, forked, I think we got it.

Here's a Weird but True fact, Caribou migrate 1,600 miles every single year.

So imagine walking from Chicago to Los Angeles every year of your entire life.

That's the life of a caribou.

Check it out guys, We found a Muskox.

We can't get too close to 'em because it's breeding season and these guys get super

aggressive, but you see those horns?

They're super key to their survival and they use 'em in pretty neat ways.

Check it out.

If a predator comes to attack a herd of oxen they circle the wagon and form a nice

protective circle around their young, with their horns pointed outwards it's like a

protective shield.

If the predator still ends up attacking, these huge oxen charge right at it,

their horns pointed outwards, ready to defend their families.

We've seen some pretty amazing headgear here today.

Like a wood bison horn and moose antlers.

And just as we're about to go back to HQ we stumble across the animal

we've been waiting for.

We found a porcupine!

KIRBY: This guy's name is Snickers.

CHARLIE: He's a North American Porcupine.

WILSON: Hey guys. CHARLIE: Hey Wilson. KIRBY: Hey.

WILSON: I see you met snickers here.

CHARLIE: Snickers is the best!

WILSON: He's a pretty neat little guy.

CHARLIE: Can we touch him?

WILSON: Yeah absolutely. Just do be careful, he does have all of his quills.

Best way to pet him is just like you're doing, yeah.

CHARLIE: Hey bud!

WILSON: Start at the head and sort of work down the uh, work down the back there.

CHARLIE: Oooo.

So although you might not think about a porcupine as having awesome headgear,

they have quills right on the top of their head.

So it's like if our hair just turned into spiky quills.

How crazy would that be?

WILSON: You can see that he's covered by about 30,000 quills.

CHARLIE: He's really smelly.

I'm not gonna lie.

WILSON: He is. CHARLIE: It's like a wet sour sock.

Is what this porcupine smells like right now, not the best.

KIRBY: Weird but True , a group of porcupines is called a prickle and baby porcupines

are called porcupettes.

So a group of baby porcupines is called a prickle of porcupettes.

CHARLIE: So porcupines can't shoot their quills like a lot of people think,

but if he ever feels threatened they'll stand right up on end.

And because they're barbed at the end, you know, if a predator attacks these guys

they're gonna end up with a lot of quills to the face.

WILSON: Well unfortunately guys, I'm afraid we are gonna have to wrap it up a little

bit, uh snickers is really busy this week and he's got another interview he's got to

prep for, you know, with the lifetime achievement award and all.

CHARLIE: Don't worry we totally understand.

Thanks so much for your time snickers!

KIRBY: Thanks for showing us around.

CHARLIE: See ya snickers! Bye Wilson. KIRBY: Bye.

Weird but True, Cape Buffalo horns can grow so large that they fuse

in the center to become one!

CHARLIE: Hey guys! KIRBY: Hey! CHARLIE: What's crackin'?

We just got back from the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, Alaska.

KIRBY: We saw some of the best animal headgear in the world like moose and muskox.

CHARLIE: How cute was Snickers, man?

KIRBY: Those quills were unreal!

CHARLIE: We learned so much today.

KIRBY: Antlers are shed each year, but horns last forever.

CHARLIE: What else did we learn today?

There were so many interesting things!

KIRBY: Antlers are covered with a thin layer of skin called velvet and grow up to

one inch each day.

Rhinoceroses don't have horns, because they don't have bony cores.

CHARLIE: And Giraffes don't either.

They have Ossicones made of cartilage.

KIRBY: Elk antlers grow as big as four feet long, making them nine feet tall.

I just love this stuff you know?

It's like finally learning the truth.

CHARLIE: What are you talking about?

KIRBY: The unexpected stuff, the surprises.

Like how pronghorns don't have horns.

CHARLIE: Oh there's loads of stuff like that.

Like.

KIRBY: Spanish Moss isn't Spanish.

CHARLIE: Or a moss.

KIRBY: Dragonflies aren't flies.

CHARLIE: Killer whales aren't whales!

KIRBY: We gotta go to the library.

CHARLIE: There's so much we have to research!

KIRBY: Alright guys we gotta go get some library books.

CHARLIE: But thanks for stopping by.

Come by again, when we discover more things that are weird.

KIRBY: But true! CHARLIE: We'll see you soon.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.