Therefore, the "Rudolph" red on cloudy: Are food - Expressen

Sure, Rudolph’s red mule.

The classic julvisan is admittedly pure invention.

– But it happens to still be rather close to the truth, says Professor Ronald Kröger at Lund University.

picture of reindeer in Skåne Zoo is taken with an infrared camera. The reindeer’s muzzle glow brightly red depends on the warm blood pumped there.

– Reindeer seeking the food under the snow and therefore need to keep warm overcast says Ronald Kröger. And in fact, if you look closely you can see with the naked eye that the reindeer mule “shines” a little pinkish when it is hot. However, not enough to light the way for Santa.

Ronald Kröger is a professor of functional zoology. Together with a team of researchers, he seeks the truth about the nose enigma. Reindeer’s mule is just one of a number of different animal noses they researched.

For most mammals, the anterior soft part of the nose, called rhinarium, a vital organ.

– Some mammals have warm muzzles while others, like dogs, have cold, says Ronald Kröger. It’s not news, but the question is why it is like that. In general, we know very little about how animals’ muzzles works.

research team has in the past year visited six different zoos and studied nuzzles around 70 species of animals and how they acquire sensory information using the body part.

– We’ve looked at a variety of factors, including skin texture and nature, nose movement, temperature and humidity and of course the various animal behavior, says Roland Kröger.

“Nosgruppen” at Lund University expects to present the results of their research at the beginning of next year.

– Unfortunately I can not yet reveal what we come up with, but I think many will be surprised at the result, says Roland Kröger mysteriously.

He believes that humans will eventually be able to take advantage of the team’s nosforskning.

– That’s especially dogs we looked at and the uses we are relying on a variety of areas, including the search and bloodhounds, assistant and guide dogs and hunting dogs.

– But even though we already using them in a variety of ways so I do not think we fully understand their sensory world. There is still much we can learn, and ultimately benefit from.