“The beauty of narwhals is that they were always these really mysterious creatures. For centuries no one really knew what they were. When they found these tusks they assumed that they were unicorns, and they became these incredible sought-after items.”
Using a narwhal tusk as a weapon to keep the public peace, as one passerby did last week during the most recent terror attack in London, may not make the official “8 Fun Facts about Narwhals” list, but it did have the unintended side effect of placing this little-known Arctic whale in the public spotlight, if only for a moment.
With the rapid ice melt and the effects of climate change increasingly evident to all but the most obstinate climate denier, the more one knows about this strange and yet fascinating creature in one of planet Earth’s most fragile ecosystems, the better its prospects of survival. The narwhal has not gone the way of the vaquita porpoise just yet, but like so many Arctic mammals, it faces an uncertain future.
Narwhals are closely related to the beluga whale; its tusk is not so much a tusk as a tooth, the front left tooth that, through adaptation and natural selection, protrudes from the mammal’s upper lip, while the remaining tooth is small and usually remains in the mouth. A narwhal’s tusk grows throughout its life, and can grow as long as 3 metres (10 feet). Weirdly, as the tusk grows, it spirals to the left. Whether that suggests a narwhal is left-handed or right-handed is anyone’s guess, though there are in all probability research studies that have ascertained exactly that.
If tested, the tusk can bend 30 cms (1 foot) without breaking. It’s not at all like a human tooth: it has a tough core and a soft outer layer. Narwhal tusks are tough — they can cut through inches of wood. They’re sensitive, too: Scientists have determined that narwhal tusks can have up to 10 million nerve endings.
Unlike belugas, narwhals do not fare well in captivity, which could eventually affect their future chances of survival as a species; for many endangered species in the looming Sixth Mass Extinction, captivity is increasingly the only way a viable gene pool can be maintained. (Even captivity offers no surety, as the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, in 1933 proves, not to mention the northern white rhino, more recently.)
Narwhals live in the Arctic waters off Greenland, Russia and Canada — the very region most at risk from climate change. Every spring they migrate from coastal bays into the deep ocean.
Their summer diet consists of Arctic cod and Greenland halibut, but fish stocks are increasingly vulnerable, given the dramatic changes in sea currents and water temperatures caused by climate change, particularly in the world’s polar regions.
Narwhals make some of the deepest winter dives recorded by a marine mammal; they’ve been known to dive as deep as 800 metres (2,600 feet) in midwinter, up to 12 or more times a day, in search of food. Some narwhals have been known to dive as deep as 1,500 metres (4,900 feet), though not as often as the more routine dives.
According to one indigenous legend, the Inuit believe the narwhal’s tusk was created after a hunter harpooned a large whale and was dragged out to sea by the harpoon’s rope tied around her waist. Her hair, which she wore in a twisted knot, was transformed into a hardened tusk, and the legend of the narwhal was born.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the narwhal officially as “near threatened,” which means that, while not threatened exactly, means the species may be threatened in the near future. “Near threatened” includes species that are officially defined as being “vulnerable.”
During last weekend’s terror attack in London near London Bridge, a Polish chef, identified only as Lukasz, witnessed the stabbings, in which two people died. He pulled a 1.5 metre (5 foot) narwhal tusk from the wall in nearby Fishmongers’ Hall, and helped subdue the attacker, later identified as Usman Khan, 28, who had been attending an Islamic deradicalisation program at the time at Fishmongers Hall, sponsored by Cambridge University. The narwhal tusk became a prominent feature in news stories about the incident, because it was such an unusual detail.
Crazily, the publicity touched off a social-media craze about narwhals in general, and narwhal tusks in particular.
“The narwhal tusk has a wondrous and mystical history,” the Washington Post reported, only partly tongue-in-cheek. “A new chapter was added on London Bridge.”
“There’s something very British about fighting a terrorist with something as surreal as a narwhal tusk,” English historian Guy Walters told the Post. “We don’t carry weapons in this country. But we do have narwhal tusks around.”
Narwhals themselves are under threat, though, as climate change is causing the ice cover they rely on for shelter and food to dissipate.
Losing them would be a crying shame.
