Behold Rare Footage of What Narwhals Actually Use Their Tusks For

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Behold Rare Footage of What Narwhals Actually Use Their Tusks For

Narwhal tusks are the stuff of legends, literally. Growing up to ten feet long, they were once believed by some medieval cultures to be the

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like the unicorn — not to mention the inspiration for Jules Verne’s iconic nineteenth-century science fiction novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.”

As prominent a fixture of public fascination they may be, scientists have long struggled to understand how narwhals actually use these long, spirally protrusions. The tusks, which are actually an elongated tooth that typically belong to males of the Arctic whale species, are known to be flaunted in mating rituals, but whether they served other purposes has escaped observation.

Now, as

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published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, a team of researchers from the US and Canada have used drones to capture rare footage of the whales using their tusks in the wild, including the first video evidence of the tusks being used to toy with and investigate their surroundings.

“Narwhals are known for their ‘tusking’ behavior, where two or more of them simultaneously raise their tusks almost vertically out of the water, crossing them in what may be a ritualistic behavior to assess a potential opponent’s qualities or to display those qualities to potential mates,” study senior author Greg O’Corry-Crowe, a research professor at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Florida,

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. “But now we know that narwhal tusks have other uses, some quite unexpected, including foraging, exploration and play.”

In total, the researchers documented seventeen distinct behaviors, many of which included interacting with nearby fish. In some cases, the narwhals used their tusks, non-forcefully, to influence the fish’s behavior. They would tap the fish, slowly push them downwards, flip them, or knock them off-course — but not with the intent of eating them, curiously. The researchers suggest that this is a sign of “exploratory-object-play,” in which the whales are simply trying to understand their surroundings, like a never-before-encountered fish, by playing with them.

But when it was time to forage, the researchers observed the whales using their tusks to violently strike the fish, often in rapid succession in side-to-side slashes. This incapacitated, stunned, and possibly even killed the creatures. Sometimes, the narwhals also used their tusks to ward off food thieves like seagulls.

The tusks may be lengthy but are by no means unwieldy. According to the researchers, the whales showed remarkable dexterity and speed when tracking fish with the tip of their tusks. And they’d have to be, to pull off maneuvers like “near instantaneous turns up to 360 degrees, completed in under three seconds which were achieved by rotating the body on its side and moving the head downwards towards its tail,” as the researchers wrote in the study.

The narwhals also exhibited social behavior.

“Some of the interactions we saw appeared competitive in nature with one whale blocking or trying to block another whale’s access to the same target fish, while others may have been more subtle, possibly communicative and even affiliative,” O’Corry-Crowe said. “None appeared overtly aggressive.”

These social interactions, the researchers suggest, could accelerate how the whales adapt to the

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More on marine life: Great White Sharks Are Suddenly Washing Up Dead With Swollen Brains

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