Turns Out Santa’s Reindeer Are Actually All Female

So here’s a fun little fact— Santa’s reindeer, despite having “male” names— are all female! That’s right, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen (and Rudolph!) are all chicks, and not just because they are incredible time managers and multi-taskers. Turns out, the secret’s in the antlers.

Because although both reindeer sexes have antlers, males shed theirs right after mating season in the winter whereas females shed theirs in the summertime.

When asked about it by LiveScience back in 2012, physiologist Perry Barboza of the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska at Fairbanks backed up this claim simply by saying “It appears that way.” ]Although this isn’t the first we’ve heard of this theory, it is the most we’ve heard about it due to a tweet that went viral several days ago by Tweeter Cat Reynolds.

This revelation is sort of groundbreaking, considering Santa’s reindeer have typically been represented and referred to as males. Reynolds’ epiphany has been retweeted more than 2000,000 times, and racked up over 665,000 likes. A lot of folks are stoked on this feminist bookend to a girl-power of a year:

And since this is Twitter we’re talking about and mansplaining runs rampant, there were those who couldn’t help but make the point of “who cares because Santa isn’t real” and “oh yeah then how come the reindeer have boy names” and “hey castrated males have antlers too.”