Santa impersonators be careful. Scientists have created a Santa-detection machine and used it to show what youngsters have been telling adults for generations – that Santa has a singular face which clearly distinguishes him from different aged bearded males.

Earlier analysis has recommended that youngsters as younger as three can determine Santa Claus based mostly on his distinctive look.

“Santa Claus or Father Christmas is clearly a really recognisable individual, however we questioned whether or not that is due to his clothes, his beard or his face?” mentioned Dr Thomas Wright, a scientific geneticist on the College of Manchester, who led the analysis. “Till now nobody has ever systematically and scientifically interrogated the trendy face of Father Christmas.”

To analyze, Wright and his colleagues skilled a deep-learning facial-recognition algorithm – much like the facial ID software program used to unlock smartphones or determine folks in digital picture libraries – on a number of pictures of Santa gathered from the web. They then used the software program to scrutinise additional pictures of Santa, in addition to different grownup males and aged males with beards.

“The necessary factor is that this [algorithm] is just wanting on the facial options. It doesn’t care what the person is carrying or what colors are within the {photograph}. We wished to know, does Father Christmas have a facial phenotype that’s distinguishable from different grownup males or different aged bearded males?” mentioned Wright.

The analysis, revealed within the journal Imaginative and prescient, discovered that Santa’s face is distinguishable from these different males – though whether or not web representations of Santa are an correct portrayal of the actual magical inhabitant of the north pole, solely Rudolph and his mates can say.

Their instrument additionally didn’t categorise as Santa any pictures of Saint Nicholas, an early Christian bishop from the Center East whose behavior of secret present giving is assumed to have impressed trendy concepts about Father Christmas. Neither did it classify Walter Clement Shields, an early Twentieth-century Alaskan man not too long ago proposed as a prototype for Santa, regardless that he additionally delivered items by reindeer sleigh.

Wright needs to look at whether or not associated festive characters, corresponding to Papa Noël, Tomte, Julenissen, Ded Moroz, Sinterklaas and Los Reyes Magos, may move the take a look at, in addition to devoted Santa impersonators who attend the annual World Santa Claus Congress.

The instrument is also developed to supply a Santa “lookalike rating”, reasonably than merely classifying people as “Santa” “grownup man” or “aged bearded man”, Wright recommended.

It will even be attention-grabbing to discover whether or not different folklore characters, such because the Tooth Fairy, Robin Hood, and Tom Thumb, had distinct faces, he added.