'Unicorn' deer with rare single horn spotted in Italy

[flashl]

ROME (AP) — A deer with a single horn in the center of its head — much like the fabled, mythical unicorn — has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday.

"This is fantasy becoming reality," Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, told The Associated Press. "The unicorn has always been a mythological animal."

The 1-year-old Roe Deer — nicknamed "Unicorn" — was born in captivity in the research center's park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, Tozzi said.

Calling it the first time he has seen such a case, Tozzi said such anomalies among deer may have inspired the myth of the unicorn.


USA Today

[Bonescrat]

1. Deer have antlers, not horns. nt.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Unicorns have been bred in captivity for decades

A very simple surgical procedure can be done on young goats to remove one horn "bud" before it has developped and attached to the skull, and move the other to the center of the goat's forehead. During the 80s and early 90s, the Ringling Brothers circus promoted these "living unicorns."