An Alaska resident’s security camera caught a rare sight on film: a large bull moose shedding both of antlers at the same time.
On 15 December, Tyra Bogert of Houston, Alaska, was hunkering down at her sister’s home in advance of a coming snow storm.
While scrolling through TikTok with her niece, she got an alert about a presence detected on the home’s backyard security camera.
The video feed showed a large male moose shaking off both of his antlers, a scene rarely captured on video.
Ms Bogert then posted the clip on her TikTok account, where the video soon had nearly 150,000 views.
"They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know moose did this in the first place and what do you mean? They can just shake their head and the antlers fall off? They don’t have to be like fighting or scratching a tree?’" she told Today of her new viral fame. "It’s pretty crazy how many people are just uneducated on moose."
The Alaska resident, who comes from a family of avid hunters, told the outlet she plans to mount the antlers on a 50-inch rack.
In 2016, a Wyoming family captured a moose shedding one of its anchors outside of their cabin.
“It was amazing,” Kim Eberhart told National Geographic. “He then looked a little scared and stunned and was shaking his head and made a really mournful sound afterwards.”
Though it’s rarely caught on video, moose shedding their antlers is a natural part of their development.
Male moose, or bulls, grow the antlers during the spring and summer, using them to spar with fellow males over mating partners.
Once mating season is over, the bulls shed their antlers in the wintertime.
"Usually both antlers are shed within hours or days of one another,” Art Rodgers writes in the book Moose. “Bulls will occasionally try to speed up completion of the process by knocking the old antlers against trees to shed them."
