By DAVID DERBYSHIRE

Last updated at 00:08 21 March 2008

They are a sign of maturity, impress the ladies and come in handy for giving rivals a nasty poke in the ribs.

But moose antlers have another crucial function - as giant amplifiers.

The bony projections enable a male animal to pick up vibrations and boost incoming sounds, giving it a hearing range of up to two miles, scientists have discovered.

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Big antlers are not only a sign of attractiveness to the opposite sex, but they also enable male moose to hear for miles

Moose, native to North America and Scandinavia (where they are known as elk), are the largest member of the deer family.

Only the males have antlers, which they shed and regrow each year.

It has long been known that moose have exceptional hearing, thanks largely to their huge ears which can rotate independently in almost every direction.

However, studies have shown that large males, which have the biggest antlers, have better hearing than females, or males which have lost theirs.

George and Peter Bubenik, a father-and-son team of researchers, decided to investigate.

Together, they followed up on an original idea put forward by George's late father Tony, who was a world authority on moose and first suggested that antlers might aid hearing in a film 25 years ago.

However, the experiment was not scientifically validated, and so the idea was not widely accepted.

To prove the idea once and for all, George, from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, took an artificial moose ear created by a TV special effects team and mounted it on set of trophy antlers, the BBC website www.loveearth.com reports.

He inserted a microphone and sound meter into the ear canal and then put a speaker 30ft from the artificial ear.

He then played a noise through a loudspeaker in the room.

When the moose ear faced the source of the sound, the meter recorded 59.5 decibels.

When the ear faced backwards, it registered 57.5 decibels.

But when the ear was moved into a sideways position, where it could capture sound amplified by the antler, it recorded 61 decibels.

After repeating the experiment, the father and son team concluded that antlers improved hearing by 19 per cent.

Peter, a mathematician at Cleveland State University in Ohio, said: "So far there is no evidence any other deer species has this capacity.

"As far as I know, the only other mammals having the capacity to amplify incoming sounds are certain species of whale and dolphin which have a skull structure that may serve the same purpose."