Red-nosed reindeer 'found in brain image'

[dutchman]

Scientists taking internal pictures of the brain at Newcastle University have found what appears to be the image of a red-nosed reindeer.



The researchers were studying neurons in the hippocampal region of the brain and took a close-up image of a blood vessel which had the appearance of a reindeer with antlers and a tail.

Claudia Racca, who performed the experiment with colleague David Cox at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University, said: "Biology can throw up things like this, but it was a nice surprise to find this image.

"We were looking at a section of the tissue and noticed this strange but familiar shape. It was intriguing and we noticed the similarity to a reindeer."

She added: "We then took an overexposed picture of it and the red blob for the nose and the white antlers showed up even better.

"We got distracted from the science at that point and had a bit of fun with the pictures of Rudolph instead. It may not be very valuable scientifically but it looks nice on the eye."