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Insulin may be Big Antler hormone

Extra sensitivity to hormone in certain developing tissues might give animals oversized body parts

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

OTTAWA — Some of the animal kingdom’s showiest extremes, from deer antlers to the outsized horn of the male rhinoceros beetle, may be natural insulin meters.

The tissue that forms the horn on the rhinoceros beetle Trypoxylus dichotomus is more sensitive to insulin than tissue elsewhere, offering a possible explanation for how some animals’ outsized ornaments evolved.