89 Fun Facts About Reindeer

The word 'caribou' comes from a Mi'kmaq name that describes the animal doing what?

Pawing away snow. Dictionaries trace the name through Canadian French to Mi'kmaq qalipu, 'snow-shoveller', for the way the animal scrapes down to its winter food.

What makes reindeer unique among all deer species?

Females may grow antlers. A cow keeps hers right through the winter and drops them only in spring, around the time her calf is born.

When do male reindeer usually lose their antlers?

Late autumn or early winter. By then the antlers have done their job: bulls use them to spar over mates in the breeding season, drop them soon after and grow a larger pair the next year.

Between summer and winter, the eyes of Arctic reindeer change from what colour to what?

Gold to blue. The mirror-like layer at the back of the eye shifts colour with the seasons, a change thought to help the animals see through the long dark of the Arctic winter.

Reindeer can see which kind of light that humans cannot?

Ultraviolet. Things that vanish against snow in ordinary light, such as fur, urine and the plants they graze, stand out in sharp contrast to an eye that can see it.

What sound do reindeer make with every step as they walk?

A clicking. Tendons slip over small bones in the foot with each stride, so a herd on the move travels in a steady chorus of clicks.

What is the main winter food of reindeer?

Lichen. So-called reindeer moss is no moss at all, and it grows in pale mats across the northern lands where the herds spend the winter.

Summer caribou herds can swell to tens of thousands of animals partly to get relief from what?

Biting insects. Mosquitoes, warble flies and nose bot flies torment the herds, which bunch together and head for windy ridges and coasts where the swarms thin out.

Norwegian whalers introduced reindeer in 1911 to which remote island on the edge of the Antarctic?

South Georgia. Ten animals brought for fresh meat grew into the world's most southerly herds, which trampled so much wildlife habitat that all were removed in the 2010s.

How soon after birth can a reindeer calf outrun a human?

One day. A calf can suckle within minutes and follow its mother within the hour, a head start it needs because the herd keeps moving and predators single out newborns.

How do reindeer hooves change with the seasons?

Spongy in summer, hard-rimmed in winter. The soft pads grip wet tundra; when they shrink in the cold, the sharp hoof edge is left exposed to bite into ice and crusted snow.

Why do reindeer float so high when swimming?

Hollow, air-filled hairs. The trapped air works twice over, buoying the animal up in water and holding in body heat on land.

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

Warms incoming air. Icy air is heated on its way through the nose before it reaches the lungs, and the nose is so tightly packed with blood vessels that scientists joked it explains Rudolph.

Which is the smallest kind of reindeer?

Svalbard reindeer. Short-legged and round-headed, they have lived on Norway's Arctic islands for thousands of years and, unlike most of their kin, stay put instead of migrating.

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

Semi-domesticated. Herders use them to pull heavy loads and keep them for milk, meat and hides, a way of life found right around the Arctic.

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

The Sámi. Reindeer give them meat, fur and transport, and in parts of the Nordic countries the right to herd the animals is reserved for them by law.

The herding lands across the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia are traditionally called what in English?

Lapland. Finland bills its share as the home of Santa Claus, whose village, complete with reindeer, sits on the Arctic Circle at Rovaniemi.

Which of these countries, far from the Arctic coast, has a small community of traditional reindeer herders?

Mongolia. The Dukha of the far northern forests keep reindeer for their milk and for riding, and rarely kill one for meat.

A small reindeer herd lives in which British national park?

Cairngorms. Reindeer are believed to have died out in Scotland about 800 years ago, and it took until 1952 for a husband-and-wife team to bring them back to the mountains.

Which Canadian coin has shown a caribou on its reverse since 1937?

The quarter. Artist Emanuel Hahn's caribou arrived when a new monarch's portrait prompted Canada to redesign its coins, and it has given way only briefly to commemorative designs.

What caused about 61,000 reindeer to starve in Siberia in 2013?

Rain freezing on snow. Unseasonal rain froze into a crust of ice that the animals could not break through to reach their food, and some 20,000 had starved the same way in 2006.

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

Eight. Two years earlier, the first verse to put a reindeer in front of Santa's sleigh had given him just one; this poem multiplied the team and named every animal.

In 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', which reindeer does St. Nicholas call by name first?

Dasher. He heads a roll call that leaves out the most famous reindeer of all: Rudolph was not invented until 1939, more than a century after the poem.

Santa's reindeer Donner and Blitzen take their names from Dutch words meaning what?

Thunder and lightning. The poem first printed the pair as 'Dunder and Blixem'; later editions made them Donder and Blitzen, and today's Donner arrived later still.

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

Clement Clarke Moore. The poem appeared unsigned in a Troy newspaper and was not printed under his name for another fourteen years, and Henry Livingston Jr.'s family has long argued that Livingston wrote it.

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

Montgomery Ward. The store had been buying in Christmas booklets to give away and asked one of its own copywriters for a cheaper home-grown one; it handed out 2.4 million copies that year.

Who wrote the original story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1939?

Robert L. May. A copywriter at a Chicago department store, he tried each part of the story out on his four-year-old daughter Barbara as he wrote it.

Why did the store that commissioned Rudolph in 1939 at first reject a red-nosed hero?

A red nose suggested drunkenness. The author changed his boss's mind with a colleague's sketches of a bright-nosed deer, drawn from life on a trip to a Chicago zoo.

Which songwriter turned the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer into a hit song in 1949?

Johnny Marks. He was the brother-in-law of Rudolph's creator, who talked him into setting the story to music; he later wrote 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' as well.

Which 'Singing Cowboy' took 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' to number one at Christmas 1949?

Gene Autry. Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore had both turned the song down before he recorded it, and it went on to become one of the best-selling Christmas songs of all time.

Which singer narrates the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as Sam the Snowman?

Burl Ives. His snowman also sings 'A Holly Jolly Christmas' in a special that went on to be rebroadcast every Christmas for more than half a century.

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

A dentist. The ambition pays off in the end: Hermey disarms the Abominable Snow Monster by pulling out its teeth.

What is the name of the doe who befriends Rudolph in the 1964 TV special?

Clarice. She tells Rudolph he is cute, and the compliment so delights him that he takes off and flies.

By the end of the 1964 Rudolph special, what has Yukon Cornelius trained the Abominable Snow Monster to do?

Trim a Christmas tree. Prospector and monster had been given up for lost after tumbling off a cliff; Yukon explains that the beast's talent for bouncing saved them both.

Which studio, later famous for Frosty the Snowman, made the 1964 Rudolph special in stop-motion?

Rankin/Bass. Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass ran an American company, but its puppets were animated in Japan, the voices recorded in Canada and the music in England.

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

CBS. NBC, which had first shown it in 1964, marked the homecoming by airing it on 6 December 2024, sixty years to the day after the premiere.

Sven the reindeer is the companion of which Frozen character?

Kristoff. He speaks Sven's thoughts aloud in a goofy voice, a habit the film's directors borrowed from the way they talk for their own cats and dogs.

In a 1979 novelty Christmas hit by Elmo & Patsy, who 'got run over by a reindeer'?

Grandma. The singer, Elmo Shropshire, was a veterinarian who played bluegrass with his wife, and the song's own writer had failed to talk his band into performing it.

The English word 'reindeer' comes from which language's name for the animal?

Old Norse. Its usual word for the animal was hreinn, and the 'deer' on the end is an old word for any beast, so the name has nothing to do with the reins of a sleigh.

What killed 323 wild reindeer in one storm on a Norwegian mountain plateau in 2016?

A lightning strike. It hit a herd on the Hardangervidda plateau, and Norway's environment agency then debated whether to leave so many carcasses lying in the open.

Which rock 'n' roll pioneer recorded the Christmas single 'Run Rudolph Run' in 1958?

Chuck Berry. The single was only a minor hit in 1958 but kept coming back each December, and at the start of 2021, more than 60 years on, it finally reached the Hot 100's top ten.

In 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', the reindeer arrive 'more rapid than' which birds?

Eagles. The poem does not call them reindeer at that point but 'coursers', and it sends them up to the housetop like dry leaves caught in a hurricane.

What are reindeer antlers covered in while they grow?

Velvet. The fuzzy skin carries the blood supply that feeds the growing bone, and big bulls shed it in late summer, a sign that the breeding season is near.

Which of these names did Rudolph's creator consider for his red-nosed reindeer before settling on Rudolph?

Reginald. Wanting a name that began with R, the author also weighed Rollo before choosing Rudolph for his misfit.

The first poem to put a reindeer in front of Santa's sleigh was published in 1821 in which city?

New York. Printer William Gilley issued the anonymous verse in a small booklet for children, two years before a far more famous poem gave the reindeer their names.

Which yearly event leaves bull reindeer exhausted and easy prey for predators?

The autumn rut. Weeks of sparring and chasing rivals, with little time to feed, leave a bull drained and often injured, so he goes into winter with little in reserve.

As of 2025, which category does the IUCN Red List give the reindeer?

Vulnerable. That sits one step short of Endangered: the animal is still widespread across the Arctic, but its wild numbers are listed as falling.

In the 1964 Rudolph special, what nickname does prospector Yukon Cornelius give the Abominable Snow Monster?

Bumble. The monster appears nowhere in the original story; scriptwriter Romeo Muller invented it for television, and in 2014 it got a US postage stamp of its own.

Who named the Eurasian tundra reindeer Cervus tarandus in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus. He filed the animal under Cervus, alongside other deer, and it was only in 1827 that Charles Hamilton Smith gave reindeer a genus of their own.

The old Finnish distance unit poronkusema, about 7.5 km, was how far a reindeer could travel without what?

Stopping to urinate gave the unit its name, which joins the Finnish for 'reindeer's' and 'peed by'. It was never precisely defined, so 7.5 km is the usual upper estimate.

The women's winner of a World Cup race held each year in Levi, Finland, is awarded a reindeer in which sport?

Alpine skiing gives the animal to the winner of the women's slalom, the race that the resort of Levi stages on the World Cup circuit each season.

Anchorage's Running of the Reindeer, held at the Fur Rendezvous festival, spoofs a tradition of which Spanish city?

Pamplona's Running of the Bulls is the target: since 2008 crowds have run four blocks of downtown Anchorage with a group of reindeer released behind them.

The 13,000-year-old Swimming Reindeer sculpture in the British Museum was carved from the tusk of which animal?

Mammoth ivory was the sculptor's material, and the two pieces were not recognised as a single carving until a visiting priest fitted them together in 1904.

In which Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale does a reindeer named Bae carry the girl Gerda north?

The Snow Queen has Gerda meet the captive reindeer in a robbers' den, where a robber girl frees them both so they can ride to the palace and rescue Kai.

When plant food runs short, reindeer have occasionally been seen eating which small Arctic mammals?

Lemmings turn up in the diet of nutritionally stressed reindeer, which have also been recorded eating fish such as Arctic char and the eggs of birds.

On average a bull caribou's antlers are the second largest of any living deer, behind those of which animal?

Moose carry the only bigger antlers, but relative to the size of the animal the reindeer has the largest of any living deer.

Caribou, a sweet mix of red wine, whisky and maple syrup, is the traditional drink of a Winter Carnival held where?

Quebec City carnival-goers carry the drink around inside plastic walking canes, and it can be served hot or cold depending on the weather.

A 2016 heatwave thawed a 75-year-old reindeer carcass in the Arctic permafrost and set off an outbreak of which disease?

Anthrax spores can lie dormant in frozen ground for decades, and outbreaks killed about 1.5 million reindeer in Russia's far north between 1897 and 1925, leaving burial grounds across the permafrost.

Which American structure was designed with raised and buried crossings so that migrating caribou could get past it?

Trans-Alaska Pipeline critics had warned it would block migration routes much as the transcontinental railroad had hurt the bison, and caribou became the symbol of the fight.

Unlike the horns of cattle and sheep, the fully grown antlers of a reindeer are made of which material?

Bone is all that remains in a finished antler, and it forms faster than any other in a mammal. A horn is different: a living core wrapped in a sheath of keratin.

Which Roman general described a deer-like beast of the Hercynian Forest that scholars take to be a reindeer?

Julius Caesar put the animal in his commentaries on the Gallic War, in a passage about the forests of Germany dated to 53 BC.

Some reindeer in Scandinavia were found to exceed legal limits for radioactive caesium 26 years after which accident?

Chernobyl's fallout drifted over Scandinavia in 1986, and its caesium-137 takes about 30 years to decay by half, so grazing animals kept picking it up for decades.

Which predator is known to follow a single caribou herd all year, living off it as it migrates?

Gray wolf packs may shadow one herd year-round, and in Canada individual grizzly bears have been seen doing the same.

In the animated Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer, what kind of animal is the title character?

A dog, to be exact a Jack Russell terrier voiced by Drew Barrymore, who was also an executive producer of the special.

Which British charity co-produced the BBC's Robbie the Reindeer specials, about the son of a famous red-nosed father?

Comic Relief made the specials with BBC Bristol, and the first two were animated in stop-motion with Aardman, the studio behind Wallace and Gromit.

Which stocky member of the weasel family is known to prey on newborn caribou calves and on cows giving birth?

Wolverines pick off the easiest targets, newborn calves and cows in labour, and only rarely tackle adults unless they are sick or injured.

Which soft boots worn by Inuit and Yup'ik peoples are traditionally sewn from caribou skin or sealskin?

Mukluks made for the cold months often use fur from a caribou's legs, which is warmer than sealskin because the animal relies on fur instead of blubber for insulation.

Which hooded Arctic jacket, first made by Inuit from caribou or seal skin, takes its name from a Greenlandic word?

Anorak comes from the Greenlandic word annoraaq, and the caribou-skin originals were made for hunting and kayaking in the frigid Arctic.

Barren-ground caribou spend summer on the open tundra and move for the winter into which other biome?

Taiga here means the transitional zone where boreal forest thins out toward the tundra, so the herds shuttle between open ground and the shelter of trees.

Aristotle wrote of the tarandos, an ox-sized deer often identified as the reindeer, that could do what to hide?

Change its fur colour is the trick both Aristotle and Theophrastus credited to the beast, probably drawing on the same lost report from the land of Scythia.

The wide, flat brow tines on a caribou's antlers go by which nickname in North America, after a digging tool?

Shovels is the North American hunters' name for the broad, flattened brow tines that jut forward over a caribou's face.

Which service landed 29 reindeer on Alaska's St. Matthew Island in 1944 as an emergency food supply?

The US Coast Guard left within a few years but the animals stayed, multiplying to about 6,000 by 1963 before the herd crashed to just 42.

Reindeer were introduced to which North Atlantic island, where a herd of several thousand roams the northeast?

Iceland's reindeer all descend from imported animals, and a second herd that once lived elsewhere on the island has died out.

Which stone landmarks did the Iñupiat of northern Alaska use to help steer caribou into enclosed areas?

Inuksuit, figures built of stacked stones, helped hunters herd the animals into contained areas where they could be killed.

A caribou and a narwhal are the two supporters on the coat of arms of which part of Canada?

Nunavut chose the pair to stand for the sustenance and natural resources of the land and the sea.

A bronze caribou stands over the Somme battlefield at Beaumont-Hamel as the emblem of a regiment from where?

Newfoundland's regiment fought there on the opening day of the battle in 1916, and the statue faces the old enemy line with its head thrown high in defiance.

The small, pale caribou of Canada's High Arctic islands are named after which American polar explorer?

Robert Peary's namesake is the lightest caribou in North America, with cows averaging about 60 kg, and it is a major food source for the Inuit.

The Nordic dish sautéed reindeer is traditionally served with mashed potatoes and a preserve of which berry?

Lingonberry preserves are the modern partner for the dish, while the older way is to mash the raw berries with sugar.

Missionary Sheldon Jackson helped ship nearly 1,300 reindeer to Alaska in the late 19th century from which country?

Russia's far east lay just across the Bering Sea, where a sea captain named Healy had watched the Chukchi people use tame reindeer for food, travel and clothing.

Which people of Alaska and Yukon traditionally sited their villages along the Porcupine caribou herd's route?

The Gwich'in rely on the herd as their primary sustenance, and their tribal council has a seat on the board that manages it.

The Porcupine caribou herd calves on the coastal plain of which protected area of Alaska, long eyed for oil drilling?

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge holds the herd's 1.5-million-acre calving ground, known as the 1002 area, which a 2017 law opened to oil and gas drilling.

A reindeer appears on the coat of arms of Västerbotten, a historic province of which Nordic country?

Sweden's old province is not alone in its choice: the Finnish town of Kuusamo also puts a reindeer on its arms.

How do herders in Scandinavia traditionally show which reindeer in a mixed herd belongs to which owner?

Cuts in the ears, in a pattern registered to each owner, are made in the calf's first year, and a committee has to approve every new design.

Which low, boat-like Nordic sled, sometimes built without runners, can be hauled by a person or a reindeer?

Pulk is the Norwegian form of a name borrowed from the herding peoples of the far north, and the low-slung sled can be drawn by hand as easily as by an animal.

About half of which people of the Yamal Peninsula are nomads who herd reindeer along fixed migration routes?

Nenets families on the move keep one sleigh as holy, loading it with sacred items such as bear skins, religious figures and coins.

Which Arctic hamlet in Canada's Northwest Territories has an Inuvialuit name meaning 'resembling a caribou'?

Tuktoyaktuk has a legend to match: reefs said to look like petrified caribou can be seen along its shore at low tide.

Which fatal deer illness was first found in Europe in 2016, in a wild reindeer herd in Norway?

Chronic wasting disease turned up in the Nordfjella herd, the first case recorded anywhere in Europe after decades in which it was known only from North America.

Dawson's caribou, extinct since the early 1900s, lived only in which archipelago off Canada's Pacific coast?

Haida Gwaii, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands, was home to the animal on Graham Island. It is one of three reindeer subspecies known to have died out.

Reindeer run wild on the Kerguelen Islands, a remote territory in the southern Indian Ocean belonging to which country?

France's islands even include one known as Île aux Rennes, or Reindeer Island, which lies in the Golfe du Morbihan.