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You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But how will nature give Santa's reindeer the best justification of all?

Flight is the first and most obvious issue to tackle. Not everyone is 100% sure where the image of reindeer carrying Santa's sleigh originated. Some say it was a declawed corruption of goats carrying Thor's chariot. Others say it was how real reindeer look when under the influence of mushroom consumption. Whatever the reason, the sad fact remains that reindeer and their wild counterparts, caribou, just aren't built for flight.

So how does one make them suitable for application to serve Saint Nicholas?

Let's start with the most obvious proposal--give them wings. It's not rocket science. Having wings is the only way vertebrates can fly. But the real question is, which wings? This is important because Santa's reindeer have to be built for two things--speed and distance. Albatrosses have what scientists call "high-aspect ratio wings", which usually have low wing loading and are far longer than they are wide, ideal for long-distance soaring. But when you have to cover one hemisphere in twelve hours and the other in twelve more, speed is also essential. That is for the "high speed wings", a type you'd find in ducks and their most feared enemy, the Peregrine Falcon. An intermediary of the two types could be the answer, but does it exist?

Unfortunately, just gluing wings onto a deer's shoulders won't cut it. For real flight capability, we need to change the skeleton. My first proposal is to make the bones hollow, just like a bird. This helps in lightening the weight load without sacrificing strength.

Another anatomical requirement for flight is to have fewer bones, so my next proposal is this--get rid of the tail altogether (they have tails, small as they may be), shorten the spine a little and reduce the hoof number from cloven to singular--in simpler English, turn a deer's foot into a horse's foot.

My next proposal is to buff up the thorax. How? First, by lengthening the thoracic vertebrae into a strong hump (more like a bison's than a deer's). Second, by enlarging the sternum into a keel proportionately identical to a pigeon's (by itself proportionately larger than that of its worst foe, the Peregrine Falcon).

But if I buff up the thorax to the proposed degrees onto a mammal varying in shoulder height from 33.6 to 58.8 inches, that would make it too front-heavy. So my next proposal is to raise the shoulders up. How far up? The tallest deer in the world, the long-extinct Stag Moose, stood eight feet tall at the shoulders. To even out the frontal weight load, my next proposal would be to angle the neck near-vertically, just like another long-extinct kind of deer, the Irish Elk.

The thicker, meatier chest is already covered, but I have a feeling that it would take more than that for eight reindeer to carry a sleigh full of gifts for two billion good Christian children. They'd also need a larger heart--proportionately closer to a bird's than a mammal's. Larger lungs--15% of the total body volume rather than the typical mammalian 7%--coupled with air sacs could improve stamina, as well.

There is another proposal that I find interesting--since the reindeer will have bird wings, one must consider feathers being the whole integument from beginning to end. A coat of feathers actually has better efficiency at body temperature than fur. Whereas fur just keeps the body warm, feathers can help in keeping the body warm and cool. This might prove useful in making sure that the reindeer don't overheat during their annual job.

These proposals listed above mean one last proposal--turning Santa's sleigh from this...

enter image description here

...to this.

enter image description here

In the event one does not find the perspective clear, this is a travois. Unlike the sort of dog sleds you see in the Iditarod races, it splays out like a fan. For eight reindeer of the caliber of the proposals listed above, this might help even out the weight distribution and even give their wings more room to spread.

Are any of my proposals listed above sound, or have I just brought too much weight for the reindeer to fly?

JohnWDailey
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This is so impossible, I honestly can't tell if it's a joke.

No, wings aren't going to work, as explained in the pegasus question.

And then, "a sleigh full of gifts for two billion good Christian children"? As @TrEs-2b points out, even light toys are going to run you in the hundreds of millions of pounds, something that no eight creatures of any type can push along the ground, let alone something eight poorly-designed biological delivery planes could drag through the sky.

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Azuaron
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  • This is not a helpful statement. That pegasus question focuses on evolutionary possibility. This does not. – JohnWDailey Oct 12 '16 at 18:01
  • @JohnWDailey The pegasus question first asks "Is it possible?" and the answer is "no". If you want science-based, you have to have something that's within the realm of possibility. – Azuaron Oct 12 '16 at 18:47
  • You're thinking "reality-check" or "hard-science". I assure you, this is NOT Anatomically Correct. I have no interest in evolutionary possibility because it's already been done before. – JohnWDailey Oct 12 '16 at 21:59
  • @JohnWDailey Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the science-based tag description: "For questions that require answers based in hard science, not magic or pseudo-science, but do not require scientific citations." (emphasis mine) If that's not what you want, you need to remove that tag. – Azuaron Oct 13 '16 at 12:51
  • http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55663/the-centaur-lets-get-real-shall-we?rq=1 http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56466/the-mer-lets-get-real-shall-we?rq=1 Look at the answers presented in those two links. – JohnWDailey Oct 13 '16 at 15:09
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    @JohnWDailey hate to break it to you, but he's right (both in his answer and his defense of the answer) – TrEs-2b Oct 13 '16 at 17:01
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    @JohnWDailey also what are asking? If you are uninterested in the evolution aspect, then his second part easily answers your question – TrEs-2b Oct 13 '16 at 17:04
  • @TrEs-2b I'm asking for BIOLOGICAL plausibility, not evolutionary. – JohnWDailey Oct 13 '16 at 18:05
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    @JohnWDailey and he answers clearly that it is biologically impossible; no creature that is theoretically possible can do what the mythical reindeer can, period. It is biologically impossible – TrEs-2b Oct 13 '16 at 18:09
  • @TrEs-2b If you've seen my centaur or mer questions, you'd see how "biologically impossible" creatures could work. – JohnWDailey Oct 13 '16 at 18:40
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    @JohnWDailey actually no, the centaur can be explained by having life start as hexapodal and the mermaid can be explained in a multitude of ways, a reindeer without wings is impossible – TrEs-2b Oct 13 '16 at 18:58
  • @TrEs-2b The point is that you don't play along. – JohnWDailey Oct 13 '16 at 19:23
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    @JohnWDailey No, when you ask if something is realistic, I'm not going to blindly play along and say yes, I'm going to say no, because it's not – TrEs-2b Oct 13 '16 at 19:42
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    @JohnWDailey Neither of your other two examples is relevant here, because, while they are certainly weird and would almost certainly never evolve, you aren't running your head into the laws of physics. With flying reindeer, you are. Flying is extremely difficult, and you're asking for large, heavy, non-aerodynamic creatures to fly through the sky carrying more weight than any animal has ever moved even along the ground. No, it's not even a little possible, let alone plausible. If you want pseduo-science answers, remove the science-based tag and I will happily give one to you. – Azuaron Oct 13 '16 at 21:03
  • On the contrary, they ARE relevant because these are creatures that did not exist and should not exist, but they do exist in our imagination. If you can't play along as the folks did in my centaur and mer questions, then why did you say something in the first place? – JohnWDailey Oct 13 '16 at 22:30
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    @JohnWDailey I don't know how many different ways I can say this, and after this response I'm giving up because you're just not listening. There's nothing to "play along" with here. You've overly constrained your question. If you want science-based, the only reasonable answer is "science does not allow this." You might as well be asking how an unaltered human can fly by flapping their arms. If you relax your constraints, we can talk. But as it stands this is all I can give you. – Azuaron Oct 14 '16 at 11:08
  • Science does not allow a human body glued onto a horse or a dolphin's body, either. – JohnWDailey Oct 14 '16 at 13:29
  • This is no different from the centaurs or the mers, so why make this hard on yourself? – JohnWDailey Oct 14 '16 at 13:29