Eskimo, an 8-year-old reindeer at Edinburgh Zoo, has always been a little different, and I don’t mean because he likes to wear horn decorations. He was always a submissive reindeer, too submissive, and he never grew a proper pair of antlers. The root of the problem was, apparently, something called a wedged testicle. That could not sound any more unpleasant.
The non-descended gonad was more than just the cause of Eskimo’s submissiveness, it was also a health risk. As Caster Semenya found out, underdeveloped testes tend to become tumors and throw off the body’s hormonal balance, so veterinary surgeon Romain Pizzi (I thought it was a joke name, too) performed abdominal keyhole surgery to correct the problem, a world’s first when it comes to reindeer surgery.
Apparently it’s corrected Eskimo’s lack of manliness, because when other reindeer tell him to nut up or shut up, he doesn’t stay quiet anymore.
Tags: unusual surgeries, veterinary procedures, bullied reindeer, testicle surgery, Eskimo the reindeer, unusual medical events, world’s first reindeer abdominal keyhole surgery, wedged testicle, Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland, Romain Pizzi