MagicRose99
Watch out for my thorns!
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2006
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There may be a perfectly good reason why Santa doesn't get lost on his annual Christmas globetrot: His fictional flying reindeer just might be females who don't mind stopping for directions.
The gender of Rudolph and his/her sleigh-hauling friends - the subject of goofy Internet chatter every year about this time - is now being pondered by even the renowned wildlife experts at Texas A&M University.
"Santa's reindeers were really females, most likely," said Dr. Alice Blue-McLendon, a veterinary medicine professor specializing in deer who cites the depictions of Santa's helpers with antlers as the primary evidence. It turns out real reindeer grow antlers regardless of gender, and most bulls typically shed their fuzzy protrusions before Christmas.
And my favorite line [snipped]:
"Bulls are tuckered out from rutting season when they mate with as many as a dozen females in months leading up to December. That leaves them depleted and too lean to pull a sleigh or sled through heavy snows, Finstad said."
http://www.kcra.com/holidays/18316746/detail.html
The gender of Rudolph and his/her sleigh-hauling friends - the subject of goofy Internet chatter every year about this time - is now being pondered by even the renowned wildlife experts at Texas A&M University.
"Santa's reindeers were really females, most likely," said Dr. Alice Blue-McLendon, a veterinary medicine professor specializing in deer who cites the depictions of Santa's helpers with antlers as the primary evidence. It turns out real reindeer grow antlers regardless of gender, and most bulls typically shed their fuzzy protrusions before Christmas.
And my favorite line [snipped]:
"Bulls are tuckered out from rutting season when they mate with as many as a dozen females in months leading up to December. That leaves them depleted and too lean to pull a sleigh or sled through heavy snows, Finstad said."
http://www.kcra.com/holidays/18316746/detail.html