Welcome to Brainstuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vog obam here It's no wonder. Rudolph the red nosed reindeer is the most famous member of Santa's team. On top of being a skilled flyer, his nose, as his name suggests, glows bright red. This unusual variation on the reindeer nasal prominence could have all kinds of benefits, the most important of which, of course, involves guiding Santa's sleigh.
According to folklore, if the weather's ever bad on Christmas Eve, Santa is still cleared for flight by the f A, a no less thanks to the brightness of Rudolph's nose. But how does Rudolph's nose actually work? How could one reindeer create a light bright enough to lead a sleigh through darkness and inclement weather? And how can a reindeer
actually develop a glowing red nose. Although no one may ever know for sure just how Rudolph got his unusual nose, we at how Stuff works have what we think is the most logical explanation for how this dough idear guides Santa's lay science Rudolph could use something many organisms use on Earth, in order to create natural light a neat little scientific trick called bioluminescence. Animals can make their own light by mixing certain chemical compounds together to produce a glow.
The reasons vary. Fireflies, for instance, flashlight at each other in order to attract mats, while some fish that live very deep in the ocean use light to bait prey. If this is the case with Rudolph, there would be three parts to his nasal beacon. The first would be just like any other reindeer nose, and so it's playmates technically shouldn't have shunned him from any reindeer games in
the first place. He would, you know, breathe oxygen through it, and the tissue would be made up of two layers, the dermis, which is the thick inner layer of skin that contains blood, vessels and hair follicles, and the epidermist, which is the thin outer layer that you can see and touch. The other two parts, however, would set Rootolf apart from all the other reindeer. The second part would be a thin, enclosed layer of a light using organ
between the dermis and the epidermis. Inside this layer could be the compound lucifer in, which produces light, and lucifer race, which is an enzyme that catalyzes the light producing reaction. So that's your glow. The third part is where the red nosed comes in. Most bioluminescent life forms like fireflies produce greenish light. The outermost part of Rudolph's nose, therefore,
would have to be a red phosphorescent layer. Once the light producing organs started putting off green light, the phosphorescent part of his nose would absorb that green light and emit a red light. How does nose get so bright? Though? Bioluminescence often requires another substance like oxygen to make light, and Rudolph would breathe lots of oxygen right near the light producing organs, providing enough reactions for long, intensely shiny bursts of light. But why is Rudolph the only reindeer
with a nose that glows? How could something like this have happened? Could Santa be some kind of mad scientist tweaking reindeer DNA for his own benefit, or could Rudolph's nose be a biological accident. It's possible that Rudolph's bright honker could be a reindeer ativism. Let's break that down. An atavism is a trait of distant ancestors that randomly pops up in modern day organisms, like a human with
a tail. This trait may have served a purpose for the animal way back when, but for whatever reason, that trait was silenced over time, every once in a while, making a rare return. Could distant reindeer ancestors of Rudolph have needed to produce light in order to survive in the wild. You'll find most reindeer in Scandinavia, and it does get pretty dark there during the winter, so maybe Rudolph's ancestors needed a better way to get around at night.
Oh and although Rudolph is what's called a bull male reindeer, there's a rumor that many of Santa's reindeer might be cows or female reindeer. And that's because Santa's reindeer are depicted flying on Christmas Eve with fully grown antlers. Male reindeer typically shed their antlers by early December, well before Christmas Eve. The antlers grow back in the spring and the cycle of growth and regrowth continues, but cows keep their antlers all year long. This isn't to say that
all of the other reindeer are female. Most males shed their antlers, but not all of them, and it's possible that a bowl won't lose as antlers until after December. Today's episode was written by John Fuller and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other very shiny topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.