Deer survive for years with arrows across the ribs

The deer was shot through the ribs but continued to live through the years until another hunter killed and discovered its secret.

The white-tailed deer in North Carolina, USA has been stuck with a piece of arrow in the body for years. The animal survived thanks to the bone covering the body and the arrowhead, according to Live Science. When killing a deer and detecting an old arrow, the hunter retains the strange bone. In February 2017, the Utah State Wildlife Conservation Association (UCOA) shared a rib snapshot containing an arrow on Facebook.

In the picture, the arrow is diagonally across, passing through 5 ribs and completely enclosed in bone layers. When the hard tissues form around the arrow, the structure functions like a splint for the broken ribs and injured body support of the deer, the UCOA representative said.

Bones grow around the arrow after the deer is broken with a rib.(Photo: Jackie Stegall).

Before being shot, the deer looked normal and healthy, Robert Stegall, owner of the ribs, shared with Wide Open Spaces, a website about outdoor activities like fishing and hunting. Stegall's father shot the male white-tailed deer in Anson County, North Carolina, USA, 30 years ago.

Stegall recalled that his father did not notice anything unusual until he skinned the deer and saw the bone wrapped around an arrow in his ribs. Finally, Stegall's father decided to close the skeleton display frame. By 2017, he gave it to his son as a birthday present.

The bones that grow around the arrow through the ribs look scary. However, it is not uncommon for bones to grow around foreign objects to plug into the body, according to Yara Haridy, a graduate student at the Natural History Museum, Berlin, Germany.

"I have seen bones grow around many strange things, usually teeth, " Haridy said. For example, when predators grab their prey and their teeth are attached to the prey's bones, bone can grow around the tooth when it is closed.

When the deer is injured, some ribs may break and cause heavy bleeding. Blood clots not only cling to broken bones but also collect on arrows."The blood clots then turned into frames to form soft scar tissue, forming cartilage. After that, cartilage was replaced by bone, forming hard scar tissue , " Haridy explained.

Bones can also form around the arrow through heterosexual bone, a pathological process that occurs after an injury. In this case, other tissues convert into bone. It is difficult to see which bone development process took place in the deer without cutting bone tissue and analyzing it, but both cases can occur, Haridy said.