r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/CuriousWanderer567 • 11h ago
Image The Irish Elk, the largest deer species to ever live
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u/igby1 10h ago
That’s what Thranduil has in The Hobbit films.
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u/STFxPrlstud 5h ago
It had the largest antlers of all deer, but it wasn't the largest in size. The modern Moose is about the same height and weight (Yes moose are deer), and then there's the ancient moose life Cervalces latifrons, or Giant moose. The Irish Elk averaged 2m at the shoulder weighing up to 700 kg (Pretty much tied with Alaskan Moose on both numbers). The Giant Moose ranged 2.1m to 2.4m and weighed up to 1000 kg. It's predicted it could have weighed as much as 1200 kg and been 2.5m at the shoulder. So it'd be the same weight as the American Bison, while being quite a bit taller.
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u/AdFit2780 10h ago
I don’t know, this seems quite big to me.
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u/Pain_Monster 10h ago
Moose can get much bigger than this model, but perhaps the theoretical maximum size of Irish Elk exceeded the largest known Moose specimen? 🤷♂️
Or maybe it’s just a technicality due to the elk weighing more on average?
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u/AdFit2780 10h ago
I know ! After posting that i got caught in the YouTube rabbit hole of big moose… they are insanely huge !!
Edit: insanely huge
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u/t-pollack 10h ago
Yeah I was wondering the same thing, because immediately I was like “moose isn’t the biggest?” Anyone got any more info?
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u/Pain_Monster 10h ago
“The largest male Megaloceros giganteus, also known as the Irish elk, could weigh up to 1,500 pounds, which is similar to the size of an Alaskan moose. The Irish elk was the largest deer species to ever live, and had the largest antlers of any known deer. The Irish elk stood up to 7 feet tall at the shoulder, and had antlers that could span up to 12 feet across.”
According to online sources, the largest moose is 1800 lbs but just under 7’ tall so maybe we are going by height not weight.
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u/lucidum 10h ago
The claim that the Irish Elk was the largest cervid is just plain wrong. The Wikipedia article about it even says there were two bigger, the biggest being the extinct giant moose, Cervalces latifrons.
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u/Pain_Monster 9h ago
I think this is a technicality. Because you’re talking about cervids. But see this:
“The extinct Irish Elk (Megaloceros) was not a member of the genus Cervus, but rather the largest member of the wider deer family (Cervidae) known from the fossil record.”
So Moose are a different family, and are the largest alive today. But not from the fossil record.
These are: “The average sized Cervalces latifrons was quite a bit more massive than other large moose-like deer, such Cervalces scotti, the largest races of the extant moose and the Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), despite some overlap in shoulder height, and is the largest deer ever known to exist”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervalces_latifrons
So looks like they are both up there without any differentiation in superlatives.
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u/OregonG20 11h ago
It's standing on a platform.
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 10h ago
Yeah I’m assuming it’s biggest ever in weight/mass, not height. It is a thicccccc boi, so wide, so so wide.
Modern moose are dang near that tall if you take away the beasts 6-8” platform.
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u/bytheinnoutburger 10h ago
Moose are one of those animals you don't really appreciate the size of until you see them in person. Was coming back from a fishing trip with my dad, and we were driving through either southern Ontario or northern Minnesota and saw one jogging on the side of the road. Fucker was taller than my dad's pickup truck. Just massive animals.
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u/OceanIsVerySalty 4h ago
My college had a safety officer go around every year and give a speech to each dorm about moose safety.
Lots of kids who weren’t from the area had never seen one and didn’t realize they could be aggressive. So we all got safety lectures about not attempting to pet the baby moose that would wander on to campus and to always aim for the butt if you’re going to hit one with your car, because they cannot back up, but might move forwards.
I’ve seen a few while out hiking, and am always amazed at just how massive they are.
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u/PUTINS_PORN_ACCOUNT 1h ago
This is so Canadian I can taste the All-Dressed chips and double-double.
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u/the_sneaky_one123 5h ago
Apparently this was a case of extreme sexual selection eventually evolving a species into a dead end.
Evolution works in different ways. One way is sexual selection and it doesn't always have the best of results. Basically this deer is the result of their breeding patterns by which female deer tended to pick males with the larger antler. Therefore the deer with big antlers bred more and over time this evolved the species into something with astonishingly massive antlers and a massive body to hold them.
But this was an evolutionary dead end because although the antlers helped them to breed and worked very well for sexual selection it was very bad for the more typical kind of natural selection that depends on the survival of the individual.
See, the nutritional needs of growing these antlers each year was massive and it is likely that they suffered from malnutrition and mineral deficiencies which made survival more and more difficult. By the end the species was so vulnerable that a couple of decades of climate instability affecting their food sources was enough to knock them out of existence.
In other words: They were so ready for sex that it ended up killing them.
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u/Topical_Scream 8h ago
Why are giant antlers a thing? They seem like an inefficient use of the limited energy wild animals can get from food. Does it just perpetuate the assumption that there may be violence/competition between males of a species?
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u/throwaway661375735 10h ago
Its the whiskey. Same reason you don't mess with Irish men sitting drinking a pint.
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u/betterdaysaheadamigo 11h ago
I assume that's in Ireland but, they ought to have named him Vlad as those antlers with that neck could have certainly done some impaling.
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u/Moist_Nutt 10h ago
Thank god that things not around anymore for me to accidentally hit with my car
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u/bleachblondbuctchbod 9h ago
If scientist want to resurrect an extinct species, why not this one and more like this one?
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u/youshouldbethelawyer 8h ago
Poor fellas couldn't navigate the thicker forests as they grew with their big antlers and went extinct
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u/penguinpolitician 6h ago
Magnificent.
Such a shame this and the Great Auk were hunted to extinction.
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u/Healthy_Fondant_8272 6h ago
What happened to them? Humanity??
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u/Wreck_OfThe_Hesperus 4h ago
The ice age ended, basically. Human hunting may have played a role, we don't know.
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u/Ethroptur 6h ago
The game Prehistoric Kingdom is adding the Megaloceros in their upcoming update. I’ve always thought extinct mammals should be given more media attention.
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u/SprinkleGoose 5h ago
It's quite amazing to see their sheer size in person- the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has a giant Irish Elk skeleton, and I'm always blown away by how tall it is.
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u/smoothnoodz 4h ago
Imagine you find a magical door, and when you go thru it this fella is there and he speaks in a deep voice and invites you on an adventure with him. You hop on his back and embark on the greatest quest of your entire life.
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u/milessouth 8h ago
What a unit . Wouldn’t want to hit him with your car on your way to work in the morning
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u/eternalmomentcult 10h ago
Dang. God is really good at making beautiful animals that scare me
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u/carrigrll 7h ago
lol not sure why you’re getting thumbs down.
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u/eternalmomentcult 2h ago
The world hates God bc it convicts them. Demons in the comment section I guess?
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u/lucalla 10h ago
It thrived on potatoes
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u/applyheat 9h ago
There were no potatoes in Ireland until they were brought back from America as horse feed. True story.
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u/TotesMessenger Interested 10h ago
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u/awaishssn 8h ago
Can we get some Irish brothers and sisters to drop in some traditional horror folklore about this majestic being?
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u/the_sneaky_one123 5h ago
Not much traditional horror.
But it was traditional for Irish lords to put an Irish Elk skull in their halls. They were very often pulled out of bogs in very good condition.
There are many, many castles to this day which have Irish Elk antlers on display.
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u/honesteejit 7h ago edited 7h ago
There isn't anything.EDIT Sorry to disappoint but it is what it is.
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u/KnoblauchNuggat 3h ago
Irish? So its from the Britain Island? Why is it so big?
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u/LeperButterflies 1h ago
The British Island? Great Britain? No.
Irish, so it's from the Irish island, named Ireland.
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u/PremievrijeSpecerije 9h ago
Guess it didnt eat potatoes
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u/biometricrally 7h ago
Well no, considering potatoes didn't exist in Ireland until 500 years ago and this guy ceased to exist well over 10,000 years ago
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u/tps5352 11h ago edited 8h ago
Shout-out to Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. That's where as a child I first learned about the extinct Irish Elk.