Rudolph and Bullwinkle

A lot of people have been asking me if Malcolm is a moose. Contrary to popular belief, he's actually a reindeer. 

Although both are members of the deer family, moose and reindeer have a number of physiological differences. If you look at the individual antlers, a reindeer has two distinct 'branches', while a moose has just one large one. A moose also has a 'floppier' nose area and a flap of skin that hangs below it's chin.

An easy way to think about it is that a reindeer is about halfway between a moose and a regular deer.

It really doesn't matter if people think Malcolm is a moose, though, since it has exactly zero percent effect on the story.

A couple people have also asked if Darby is a boy or a girl. Despite what his high voice and cute appearance may lead you to believe, Darby is a boy. (Not a 'boy' in the sense that he's a child, but more in the sense that you would refer to an animal as a 'boy' instead of a 'man'. Darby is actually something like 26 or 27 years old, as are the rest of the characters in the film. Thinking about them having ages feels kind of weird, though. Don't do it.)

Some of the confusion might also have to do Darby's name, which lot of people think is unisex. Fun Fact: Darby is, and traditionally has been, a masculine name, meaning 'free man' or, confusingly enough for the sake of this entry, 'deer'. People now treat it as a unisex name due to a misprint in a popular 1980's baby names book, where it was listed as female.

/ The More You Know