Image of a reindeer in Finland, with painted antlers? Find out the truth…

With technological development humans have been invading the forests and making roads and other infrastructure, paving the way to more human- animal interactions. In areas with forest cover, there are often reports of vehicles colliding with animals causing damages to vehicles while paving the way to loss of animal lives. This is our investigation over such social media claims related to Finland, which purportedly used a novel method to avoid such accidents by painting the antlers of their reindeers.

Social Media Posts

A Facebook user added photos of reindeers with the below mentioned claim.

“To avoid deer strikes, Finland is painting deer antlers with reflective paint. Every year, about 4,000 reindeer lose their lives on Finnish roads in car accidents, causing 15 million Euros of damage every year. And now, the Finnish Reindeer Herders Association is testing out a new way to make the large mammals more visible to drivers: reflective paint.”

Facebook| Archived

We detected similar type posts on Facebook as seen below.

Due to the curious nature of these social media posts, we decided to do an investigation over this.

Fact Check

Reindeers are the animals currently used for tourism, sledding as well as meat industry in various countries including Finland. Reindeers mainly live in big open farms and they are found to be roaming into the wild, where they at times meet with unfortunate accidents with vehicles. A description about the reindeer farms in Finland can be found here.Archive.

First, we did a Google Reverse Image Search to find out the true story behind one of the photos which depicted glittering antlers of a reindeer who is standing in the middle of a road at nighttime in Finland under the lights of vehicles.

We were able to find that the photo was not a natural photo and it was an artwork created by a visual artist named as @vasjenkatro using 3D technology.

In the comment’s session of the image, he revealed that it was not a natural photo. However, this 3D image was created by him, because of his exposure to an incident where the reindeers' antlers were being painted from reflective colors to avoid motor accidents in Finland.

Instagram |Archived

Then, we searched about the true incident of Finland, which had inspired the above-mentioned artwork.

According to a BBC report, the Finnish Reindeer Herders Association, started the painting of reindeers' antlers from reflective colors in 2014 to prevent accidents of reindeers and vehicles in night times on roads.

The below image depicts the real nature of antlers with reflective paint at night time.

BBC | Archived

However, the method was not successful as reported in the Associated Press Report in 2016.It can be reached here.Archived.

We contacted the Finnish Reindeer Herders Association to know whether this practice is still being carried out. The office manager of Reindeer Herders' Association, Matti Sarkela, replied stating that the painting practice of reindeer antlers was discontinued by them a few years ago and is not being practiced at present. He further added that the project was not successful. "It was not very successful, because we still get rain during those dark months and it came out that rainwater washed that fluorescent color easily away from reindeer antlers.”, he said.

Follow us and stay up to date with our latest fact checks.

Facebook | Twitter |Instagram | Google News

Conclusion:

According to our investigation, we have found out that the viral photo depicting the glittering antlers of a reindeer is not genuine and it's a 3D artwork done by an artist, who was in fact inspired by antler painting practice carried out in Finland a few years ago.

Finnish Reindeer Herders Association initiated a project to paint reindeer antlers in 2014 to reduce vehicle accidents in night time, however the project was not successful and discontinued a few years ago as rainwater washed the fluorescent color easily.