Santa may need more reindeer to pull his sleigh

Santa may need a few more reindeer to get his sleigh around the world this Christmas as the animals are shrinking in, what scientists believe, is a side effect of climate change.

The average weight of adult reindeer on Svalbard, a chain of islands north of Norway, has fallen to 48kg (106lb) from 55kg (121lb) in the 1990s as part of sweeping changes to Arctic life as temperatures rise, the scientists said.

“Warmer summers are great for reindeer but winters are getting increasingly tough,” Professor Steve Albon, an ecologist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland who led the study with Norwegian researchers, told Reuters.