It is believed that Santa Claus at Christmas flows the ground in a sleigh drawn by the northern denses-proud handsome men with luxurious horns. We decided to check if the deer team of Santa can look like this?
Image Santa in such a harness is printed every year on thousands of Christmas cards, sweaters and jewelry. In the Christmas poem "Visit St. Nicholas ", very popular in Western countries, even the names and characters of eight deer Santa are listed. In 1939, poet Robert L. May I invented The ninth deer is Rudolph, which later became the most famous of them. In Hollywood they even removed several cartoons About this deer.
A few years ago in Twitter The discussion turned that the deer of Santa was most likely not a deer, but a deer. And the point here is not in fashion for feminism. Simply, as it turned out, the northern deer, which are harnessed by Santa Claus, cannot look at Christmas as it is customary to portray them.
The northern deer are the only representatives of this species of animals, which has not only males, but also females have luxurious horns, those who look so beautiful on Christmas cards. Doctor of Biological Sciences Leonid Kolpatchikov tellsThe reason for this is the features of food mining. With difficulty clearing a feed site from the snow, a deer, whether a male or a female, should be able to protect it from the encroachments of other individuals. At the same time, both males and females drop horns every year. And the “molting” of males falls just for the period after the rut, that is, on November-December. They begin to grow again in their horns only in March.
How told Employees of the Kronotsky Reserve (the only one in Kamchatka, where the large herd of these animals has been preserved), this is due to the fact that the females have more chances to protect their cubs from adults and feed them in the most severe winter.
Thus, at the end of December, when Santa makes his trip around the world, only the females of the northern deer and very young individuals have horns. However, they have “young” horns. In 2021, several northern deer were born in the Moscow Zoo - according to their appearance It is clear that even six months later, by Christmas, they will not look like on postcards with Santa.
American scientists in the time too Connected To the discussion. Among them were those who supported the version with deer. However, Greg Finsted, the head of the deer research program at the University of Alaska in Ferebenks, proposed another option - in addition to deer and deer, the horns in the winter also have castrated deer. It is they, according to the researcher, that they harness to the sled. Firstly, they are much more obedient, and secondly, stronger than their more successful counterparts, because they are exhausted after the Gon period when they have to fight for females.
However, there is always another version. If the Santa deer manage to magically visit every house on the planet, why shouldn't they magically keep their branched horns for a month longer, and drop them after Christmas?
Legend
Read on the topic:
- Is it true that the northern deer change the color of the eyes depending on the season?
- Is it true that in Finland the deer paint horns with reflective paint to reduce the number of accidents with them?
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