Sadly this apparently was a failure

[facw]

Recently stumbled across this old (2014) pic of a reindeer with reflective antlers:

The idea was to paint their antlers (visible from all directions so that drivers could see and not hit them): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/avoid-deer-strikes-finland-painting-deer-antlers-reflective-paint-180949792

Unfortunately, this (and other solutions) failed to decrease reindeer deaths, and the paint didn't stay on:

reindeer would scrape off the fluorescent paint from their antlers. "Somehow the reindeer know they had paint on their antlers—maybe their friends laughed at them," Ollila said.

https://phys.org/news/2016-06-reindeer-herders-finland-app-road.html

Personally, I think the only solution is to genetically engineer reindeer (and regular deer) with bioluminescent horns (I guess this doesn't help much with female deer, maybe we should just make the whole thing glow)

[ItalianJobR53]

@facw +1 on making the whole thing glow

[MybirdIStheword]

@facw fun fact: both male and female reindeer have antlers, the males actually lose theirs in winter. That means that in most depictions all of santa's reindeer are female. Including Rudolph ironically.

[facw]

@mybirdistheword I suspected female reindeer had horns (or the reflective paint idea would seem pretty flawed from the start), but I didn't know males lost theirs.

[Albino Kangaroo]

@facw I think you were joking about making them glow but its not out of the realm of possibility. This is a picture of a rabbit that has had genetic modification to glow under UV light.

Article with more detail.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2013/08/14/15454/glow-in-the-dark-rabbits/

[facw]

@66p1800inpieces Only partly joking! Though something like this, applied to animals would be better, since we probably don't want UV headlights: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/want-your-flowers-to-glow-if-youre-ok-with-gmos-its-now-an-option/ (I do also want my flowers to glow)

[onlytwowheels]

@facw

Why not a reflective collar like they make for dogs???

It appears that they're putting them on cows, somewhere......

[facw]

@onlytwowheels They did apparently try some more traditional reflectors, but said they confused drivers (who thought they were attached to people, and then were surprised when they didn't act like people), and the reindeer managed to remove the reflectors.

[onlytwowheels]

@facw

Painting antlers was never going to be the answer. Antlers are used, so the wear from use would quickly remove the paint.

Maybe Night Vision, like Cadillac has offered for 2 decades, should be a standard feature in all cars....

[BicycleBuck]

@66p1800inpieces

They've done it with dogs too.

[Taylor Martin]

@facw Santa Claus Wants To Know Your Location

[Urambo Tauro]

@facw The reindeer couldn't have managed to scrape ALL of the paint from their antlers, could they? You'd think they'd miss some spots... and while the result might not be immediately recognizable to drivers as the shape of antlers, it would still stick out as something worth being cautious about.

[ranwhenparked]

@facw Can't we just make them wear these?