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b'This week we\\u2019re taking a bunch of listener suggestions and learning about a bunch of amazing hoofed animals! Thanks to Richard E., Pranav, Grady, and Simon for all their suggestions!\\n\\nA pronghorn antelope, which is NEITHER AN ANTELOPE NOR A DEER:\\n\\n\\n\\nA musk deer, which is NOT ACTUALLY A DEER AND ACTUALLY LOOKS A LOT LIKE A KANGAROO OR RABBIT WITH FANGS:\\n\\n \\n\\nA chevrotain, or mouse deer, which is ALSO NOT A DEER AND LOOKS LIKE A RODENT FRANKLY (lesser mouse deer on left, water chevrotain on right)\\n\\n \\n\\nA mama pudu with her baby, WHICH ARE DEER:\\n\\n\\n\\nA goat eating poison ivy like I told you they do:\\n\\n\\n\\nA horse eating watermelon, because it\\u2019s adorable:\\n\\n\\n\\nAn entelodont, AKA HELL PIG:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nThis week I wanted to get back into some of the excellent suggestions I\\u2019ve gotten from listeners. I looked over the list, hoping that a theme would present itself\\u2026and one did. Sort of. This week let\\u2019s learn about some interesting hoofed animals, some of them living today, some extinct. Thanks to Richard E., Grady, Pranav, and Simon for the suggestions I used in this episode, in no particular order.\\n\\nFirst, Richard asked about the differences between deer and antelope. This is an excellent question, obviously, because I\\u2019ve been sitting here staring at the screen thinking, \\u201cWell, I know they\\u2019re not members of the same family but how closely are they related?\\u201d So let\\u2019s find out. And I\\u2019ll warn you now, this gets complicated\\u2014but in an interesting way.\\n\\nAntelopes are bovids, related to cows, sheep, and goats. Deer are cervids. Both groups are related, but not very closely. They\\u2019re both members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates, because they have hooves with two toes, called cloven hooves.\\n\\nAt first glance, many antelopes look a lot like deer. But antelopes have horns, not antlers, and the horns are permanent. Deer have antlers, which they shed and regrow every year. And antelope horns, like the horns of goats, sheep, and cattle, don\\u2019t branch, whereas deer antlers almost always do.\\n\\nSo far this is pretty straightforward. But now things get complicated. Antelopes are native to Africa and Eurasia while deer live throughout the world. But there are deer that aren\\u2019t deer and there are some antelopes that aren\\u2019t antelopes. Uh oh. We\\u2019d better figure this out.\\n\\nOne thing to remember is that the group of bovids referred to as antelopes have all been lumped together in what\\u2019s sometimes referred to as a wastebasket taxon. Basically that means that the animals in that taxon didn\\u2019t really fit anywhere else, so scientists grouped them together for the time being. If a bovid is clearly not a cow, a sheep, or a goat, it\\u2019s put in the antelope group.\\n\\nThere aren\\u2019t any antelopes living in the Americas today. If you happen to live in the western part of North America, you probably just sat up and said, \\u201cHey, you forgot about the pronghorn!\\u201d But the pronghorn antelope\\u2026is not an antelope.\\n\\nSure, the pronghorn looks like an antelope. It\\u2019s deer-like, runs extremely fast just like antelopes, and has short black horns. But look at those horns. It\\u2019s called a pronghorn because the horns of the males have a prong, or branch, so that the horn is shaped sort of like a Y, with the front branch of the Y shorter than the other, and the longer branch of the Y having a sort of hook at the top. Remember how antelopes only ever have unbranched horns? That\\u2019s a clue that the pronghorn isn\\u2019t an antelope.\\n\\nBut the pronghorn also isn\\u2019t a deer. Its horns are horns, not antlers, and it keeps its horns throughout its life instead of shedding them every year. Except that it kind of does shed part of the horn every year, the sheath. The inside of a horn is bone that grows from the skull, but a sheath of keratin grows over it. If you\\u2019ve ever seen an old-fashioned drinking cup made of horn, it was made of a horn sheath, usually from a bull.'