50 Fun Facts About Reindeer

What are reindeer called in North America?

They are the same species, Rangifer tarandus; 'reindeer' is the European name and 'caribou' the North American one.

What makes reindeer unique among all deer species?

How many females have antlers varies by subspecies, but no other deer's females do at all.

When do male reindeer usually lose their antlers?

Females keep theirs until they calve, so a reindeer with antlers at Christmas is probably a female or a young male.

The eyes of Arctic reindeer change colour between summer and winter. From what to what?

The colour shift in the reflective tapetum lucidum helps them see in the months of continuous darkness.

Reindeer can see which kind of light that humans cannot?

It helps them spot things like lichen and fur that blend into snow in ordinary light.

What sound do reindeer knees make when they walk?

The click comes from tendons and can be heard hundreds of metres away; louder clicks signal a bigger animal.

What is the main winter food of reindeer, which they alone among large mammals can digest?

A bacterium found only in reindeer stomachs, Eubacterium rangiferina, breaks down the lichen's toxins.

How many chambers does a reindeer's stomach have?

Like cows, they are ruminants that chew the cud.

Some North American herds migrate farther than any other land mammal, travelling up to how far a year?

They can cover 19 to 55 km a day and run at 60 to 80 km/h.

How soon after birth can a reindeer calf outrun an Olympic sprinter?

Adults run at 60 to 80 km/h during migrations, when herds can swell to 500,000 animals.

How do reindeer hooves change with the seasons?

The winter rim cuts into ice like a skate; the big crescent hooves also work as shovels for digging through snow.

Why do reindeer float so high when swimming?

The two-layer coat, dense wool under hollow guard hairs, also keeps them warm even at 38 °C.

What special job does a reindeer's nose do in the cold?

A counter-current heat exchange in the nasal passages warms each breath before it reaches the lungs.

Which is the smallest kind of the species?

Males average just 65 to 90 kg on the Norwegian archipelago; Osborn's caribou is the largest.

Reindeer are the only deer to have been what, on a large scale?

Arctic peoples have relied on them for food, clothing and shelter since prehistoric times.

Which Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia are best known for reindeer herding?

About 2,800 Sámi herd full-time in Norway; in some regions the right to herd is legally reserved for them.

What was the Sámi region spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia formerly called?

Its own name is Sápmi.

Reindeer herding is practised in nine countries. Which of these is one of them?

The list is Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Greenland, the US (Alaska), Mongolia, China and Canada.

A small reindeer herd lives in which British national park?

Researchers there found the animals' UV vision helps them pick out lichen against snow.

Roughly how many reindeer are herded by Sámi villages in Sweden?

Norway also has some 20,000 wild mountain reindeer, notably on the Hardangervidda plateau.

What happened to more than 81,000 reindeer in Russia in 2016?

Longer autumns brought freezing rain that sealed the food under inches of ice, a climate-change effect.

How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh in the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Rudolph, the ninth, was only added in 1939.

Which of these is NOT one of Santa's eight original reindeer?

The 1823 team was Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.

The names Donner and Blitzen come from a Dutch oath meaning what?

The poem originally spelled them 'Dunder' and 'Blixem'; the German-style spellings came later.

Who is usually credited with writing 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

It was first published anonymously in the Troy, New York, Sentinel on 23 December 1823.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 for which department store?

The Chicago retailer wanted its own giveaway booklet to save money on the ones it had been buying.

Who wrote the original Rudolph story?

He considered calling the reindeer Rollo or Reginald first, and chose a reindeer because his daughter loved the deer at Lincoln Park Zoo.

Why was the idea of a red-nosed hero initially rejected in the 1930s?

May had his illustrator friend draw cute reindeer sketches to win the bosses over.

Who turned Rudolph into a hit song, recorded by Gene Autry in 1949?

Autry's record hit number one at Christmas 1949, sold 2.5 million copies in its first year and eventually 25 million.

Rudolph is usually described as which of Santa's reindeer?

His glowing nose lets him lead the team on foggy Christmas Eves.

The stop-motion TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first aired in which year?

It debuted on NBC on 6 December 1964 and has aired every year since, mostly on CBS.

In the 1964 TV special, what does the misfit elf Hermey want to become?

He and prospector Yukon Cornelius join Rudolph on the run from the Abominable Snow Monster.

What is the name of the doe who befriends Rudolph in the TV special?

She and Rudolph's parents go searching for him when he runs away.

What has Yukon Cornelius trained the Abominable Snow Monster to do by the end of the special?

Hermey had pulled the monster's teeth, which is why it turned gentle.

Which company produced the Rudolph special, later known as Rankin/Bass?

They went on to make Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town.

Which network aired the Rudolph special from 1972 to 2023 before it returned to NBC?

CBS unveiled a remastered high-definition version in 2005.

Sven the reindeer is the companion of which Frozen character?

He helps Anna search for her sister Elsa in the 2013 Disney film.

The 1989 Christmas film Prancer, about a girl who finds an injured reindeer, is set in which state?

Sam Elliott and Cloris Leachman co-star; town scenes were shot in Three Oaks.

The reindeer is the only living member of which genus?

Carl Linnaeus named the species Cervus tarandus in 1758; the genus name may come from the Sámi word 'raingo'.

How many subspecies of the reindeer are traditionally recognised worldwide?

Recent DNA studies suggest reindeer and caribou may deserve to be split further.

Which of these reindeer subspecies is extinct?

The Sakhalin reindeer and East Greenland caribou are the other two lost subspecies.

Labrador's George River herd was 800,000 to 900,000 strong in the 1990s. Roughly how many remained by 2018?

It had once been the second-largest reindeer herd in the world.

What are reindeer antlers covered in while they grow?

The velvet is full of blood vessels and is rubbed off once the antlers harden.

In which month do antlers usually start growing on male reindeer?

Females start later, in May or June; the process is called antlerogenesis.

Which is the largest form of reindeer, at the opposite end of the scale from the Svalbard animal?

Three subspecies are already extinct, including the Sakhalin reindeer and the Queen Charlotte Islands caribou.

Which nomadic people of Mongolia are known as 'the reindeer people'?

They are credited as among the world's earliest domesticators of the animal.

Roughly how long is a reindeer's gestation period?

Mating runs from late September to early November, with dominant bulls collecting as many as 15-20 cows.

In which year did the IUCN classify the reindeer as Vulnerable after a 40% population decline?

The species is not endangered overall thanks to its vast range, but the decline came over roughly 25 years.

Which two ancient Greek writers described an ox-sized Scythian deer called the tarandos?

Their claim that it changed fur colour for camouflage was probably a garbled account of the reindeer's seasonal coat.

Who named the Eurasian tundra reindeer Cervus tarandus in 1758?

The genus name Rangifer was credited to Smith in 1827 and may trace back to the Sámi word raingo.