• Question: Could a human grow horns/ antlers?

    Asked by kelan to Keith, Heather, Elaine, Derek on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Heather Eyre

      Heather Eyre answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I know people can have plastic horns put under their skin, which is a bit odd, but real horns I have never heard of.

      I guess if you had extra bond growing in the right place then yes, after all some people have small tails!

    • Photo: Keith Siew

      Keith Siew answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      Well I do remember seeing this really weird case on the national geographic of a woman with a horn… (wasn’t a true horn but made of the same stuff!)

      You see the difference between antlers and horns is usually that antlers are made out of bone… while horns like that of a rhino are actually made out of keratin whjch is pretty tough stuff… this is the exact same stuff that your hair and nails are made from and it can also be found in the outer layer of skin.

      Now if I remember correctly this woman had some rare viral infection or something like that which caused the cells on a patch of skin on her forehead to become over active and produce way too much keratin… this happen over many many years and eventually the keratin protrusion ended up looking like a horn on her forehead.

      I actually managed to find a picture of her after a bit of trawling through the internet: http://oddculture.com/weird-news-stories/the-curious-case-of-the-cutaneous-horn-women/

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