You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what, Mengo, what's that?
Well?
All right, So I was doing a little research on narwals this week, which is handy because the episode is about narwals, and I think one of the reasons narwals are so intriguing is that you actually can't find a narwal at a zoo. Did you know this?
You know? I never really thought about that, And it's weird because you see all these other Arctic creatures like whales and polar bears and things like that, So are they an endangerous species?
For the longest time, To be honest, I actually thought that they were mythological creatures. I thought it was like the unicorn of the sea, and so I thought maybe that was why. But actually, there are tons of narwals in the wild. The latest count is that they're about one hundred and seventy thousand of them in the Arctic, way more than I realized, which is a great thing. And they're huge, like their bodies are eighteen feet long and you can add another ten feet for their horn, no joke.
So that's like a twenty eight foot program height.
Yes, yeah, which is impressive. But you know, because they live a lot of their life under the ice and in these really cold, dark regions of the water, we don't really know a whole lot about them. But more importantly, when you take them out of their homes, they just don't do that well. So unlike porpoises or beluga whales, which are close cousins and actually can do okay in aquariums, narwals really react badly when they're in captivity.
So this has actually been tried before.
Well, there've only been a couple of attempts, at least two that I am aware of. So there was one in Coney Island. Of course, I think we had to assume if there was going to be an effort, there would be in Coney Island, and the narwhal was kept with a beluga and fed milk and chopped up clams. I'm not sure there was a great diet or a lot of thought put into that. But then there was another one in Vancouver where there were a bunch of
calves and an adult brought in. But in both cases the acidity and carbon dioxide levels and the narwhals blow fell and then their oxygen rises, so they can die pretty quickly because of this. But actually, if you go outside of captivity, they typically live to be fifty years old, even reach ages of one hundred in some cases, which is pretty awesome. Anyway, if you want to see a real live narwhalet, there is only one way. You gotta head north.
Well, I don't think I have any plans to get to the Arctic and then your future, but why don't we dive into the episode instead?
That sounds great, Hey.
Their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticket and sitting behind that desk. And it took me a while to realize what was going on. I mean, though it was pretty obvious. Dylan is sitting in an ice bath. I think he's just trying to recreate the situation. He's dedicated. That's our good friend, producer, Dylan.
All right, Mago. So I am both very excited about this week's episode because I knew nothing about narwals before this week. But I'm also curious why are we doing an episode on narwals again? Because I don't know if there was something in the news or in the politics cycle. There's a lot happening in politics right now. I don't know if Narwals are involved, So what's going on here?
Yeah? I guess narwalls are related to whales, and there was that strange RFK Junior story this week about his obsession with that whales head. But that is not the reason I chose Narwals. I wanted to do something on them because my family went to Provincetown this summer, which is gorgeous, and there was a museum there that had this enormous Narwal tusk displayed in it, and I was
kind of enamored by it. The tussa really beautiful, like ten feet long and spiraled and really elegant, and you can't imagine them being attached to this like big doufacy cree. But it made me realize I know nothing about narwals like you, and I thought this would be a good opportunity.
Do for see that that's a pretty that's pretty low. But I was definitely down to do this episode. So where do you want to start?
Well, why don't we start with a little primer on these magnificent tuss and what they really are? So if you look back at old drawings of narwalals, like the ones that Vikings made, the initial drawings kind of look like a unicorn's head transplanted onto a whale's body. But over time sailors and then scientists realize that it isn't some magical horn, but in fact a tooth. It turns out the horn is actually a left canine tooth that grows enormously long and mostly shows up in male.
Nor wallls, and it's just one tooth that grows like this.
Yeah, I mean you sort of see this happening in other species, like fiddler crabs have that one claw that's giant and it almost looks like a bicep. I love when they're on the Jersey shore and they fist pumped. Yea, it's amazing, but I guess favoring one side over the other something that happens in nature. The other thing that's funny about it is that narwals are considered a tooth whale because of these tusks, but when you look inside their mouths, they actually don't have any teeth in there.
It's almost like a newborn baby. And I'm going to show you this photo because I think it's so weird. It's kind of fuzzy and non threatening. And that's because nar wals just swallow their food, they don't chew it.
I can't even tell what I'm looking at. Yeah, it looks like an animal in itself. But if they can't eat with this tooth, what do they do with it?
Like?
Is it a weapon to spear food? Or what's it for?
The tusk has actually been perplexing scientists for centuries. Charles Darwin thought it might be some sort of sexual characteristic that attracted mates, kind of the way peacock's beautiful plumage draws pea hens to it.
Actually, it's fun to think about Darwin analyzing narwals. I mean, he really saw such a range of species.
Yeah, and it's amazing for such a shy and kind of elusive Arctic creature to be that well known. But also Darwin thought that maybe narwals use the tust to oust one another, kind of the way bighorn sheep headbutt for dominance.
So do nar walls joust for mates?
No, so the males do rub their tusts against each other, But apparently it's less about jousting and more about cleaning the tusts, which get various parasites and waighale lice on it. It's kind of a communal toothbrushing that they do.
Yeah.
So if these big twisted canine teeth aren't weapons and they can't chew food, why do Narwals have them?
So, Harvard Marine Mammal Dental scientists, which currently is a thing you have recently discovered that these tusts are actually precise instruments for navigating the water. One scientist told Wired quote. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and devotion to get that thing to grow. To expend that much energy in such a harsh environment, there has to be a pretty compelling reason to do it, And it turns out
it's all about measuring the water salinity. Apparently, the teeth are filled with a nerve rich pulp and this can tell them whether the water is higher or lower concentrations of salt, which to a Narwal means that either an iceberg is melting or more importantly, an iceberg is forming, so that the nar Wals don't get trapped under the ice.
Yeah.
Anyway, from what we understand right now, all this chemical sensitivity and the tusk allows them to move through the environment better.
Okay, no, that's interesting, all right, Well, since we're talking about tusk, here's a quick fact that I saw. So one of the stranger things about Narwal tusk is that their tusk always spiral to the left, so counterclockwise. And even in cases where nar Wals do have two tusks, both teeth which protrude from the right and left sides of the jaw, they spiral left.
That's so weird. I guess if someone tries to sell you a Narwal tooth that spiral is right, you know it's a fake.
It's really the best way to tell. That's always the rule of thumb. And another interesting thing is that Narwals are slow swimmers. You can actually walk faster than a nar wall swims at three point eight miles per hour. One thing that's delightful about them is that they often swim on their backs because when they're feeding on the ocean floor, they don't want to damage their tusk, which makes sense. I've not really thought about that, So they
swim upside down. And one last thing about the tust is that because they spend so much of their time under the cover of ice or deep in the ocean floor. Scientists haven't really been able to observe narwals eating, but through analyzing the tust you can actually get that data. So one scientist from McGill University put it quote, instead of doing forty years of work to get forty years of data in one year, you can get narwal tusk and go back fifty years of time.
That's really interesting. So has it taught has anything surprising?
Apparently Narwals used to eat more cod and haliban in their diet, but as the Arctic ice has been melting, they've changed their diets to eating more open ocean fish like capalin, which are related to smelt. But narwals need quite a bit of food to sustain themselves, so nearly sixty six pounds of fish a day, or as one blogger put it, the equivalent of two hundred and sixty four filao fish. Pretty yummy, right, But the worry is that, as Wired puts it, not all fish are created equal.
Arctic species are more nutritious energy wise, and to survive the cold, fish need to pack on fat, which means more calories for the predators that feed on them like narwals, So Essentially, if the food they're eating is less nutritious and less fatty, it might affect not only their energy levels but also their migratory patterns.
So obviously, nar walls have become immensely popular in pop culture. I feel like there are always these animals that surge in popularity for little periods. There was a period where everyone loved sloths, right when Kristen Bell was obsessed. Paris Hilton made kinkajus a thing for a.
Bit, that's right. I think her pet was named was it Baby Love?
Yeah? Yeah, and she kept it until it bit her.
But it's a good time to decide.
Maybe not to keep a wild animal. Yeah. And then of course you had like honey bat just went through an Internet phase where you know, everyone was worried that they didn't care much, and narwalls have sort of come into this period as well, and they've benefited from this Internet discovery. There are plushy narwalls for sale all over
the Internet. There are narwal horn candies that exist. But one thing I was curious about was whether any colleges or universities had picked up on this excitement and turned the narwal into a mascot.
That's a good question. So what did you find out?
Yeah, apparently it's been hiding under my nose all the time. Right here in New York City at the New School. They've made Narls the Narwal.
The mascots such a good name too.
And actually, Lizzie did her MFA at the New School and I asked her, why didn't you tell me that nar Wals were the mascot? And she was like, I didn't.
Think you'd care.
Of course I care. Yeah, And they only created the mascot in twenty twelve.
So why did they make the narwal the mascot instead of like a bulldog or a blue devil for instance? What made that decision?
I mean, it is funny for a school that doesn't have a giant sports program to even want a mascot, But I guess that's where administrators saw this as an opportunity. The school thought having a mascot would be a good idea to draw the student population together, and so they did a survey of what should be the school mascot, and the Narwhal narrowly edged out a cigarette.
Okay, glad it was a close one.
Cigarette's a pretty funny mascot. Because it's so lit, as the kids said. But luckily the narwal one and it provided this unique opportunity to showcase that if you're a unique and lovable weirdo, this is the school for you. And they further refined that sales picture over the years.
According to an article in the New School Free Press, this is in twenty twenty one, the university rebranded the marine mascot from wearing a basketball jersey and being pretty sporty to swapping it for a glasses wearing non binary student with a Pisces sun sign to better reflect the new school community. Now apparently, Narls is a dual major BABFA and Environmental Studies and Communication design, and also, as I mentioned before, is non binary and is possibly the
first mascot to use they them pronouns. All of this puts them in like my top five mascots of all time, with the trash Pandas, the Banana Slugs, the Delaware Blue Hens, and of course the Philly fanatic. Yeah.
I knew you're going to throw him in there, but that's that's pretty great. Well, as long as we're doing some of the sillier facts. As someone from Alabama, one of The first things I wanted to know about narwal's was how they taste, because they look like such fatty creatures, and of course I want to know can you barbecue them?
I mean, I'm guessing a narwhal would be great for a tailgate.
But when you learn, well, the first thing is that for people with our palette, you're probably more likely to enjoy than narwal skin, which tastes weirdly like hazel nuts, more than the meat.
I mean, I'd be down for some narwal nutella right.
Well, the meat is another story, of course. For the Inuit, narwal is a delicacy and it's really important, like the flesh is full of vitamins and particularly vital and see, so freezers are stocked with this stuff and it is super popular. Any it can freely hunt narwal because the population isn't at risk, though apparently it's tough work because you know, once you've harpooned a narwal, they're like one and a half tons and they sink fast, so you
really have to lug them in quickly. But in terms of how the meat taste, you can either boil it and serve it with soy sauce or chew it raw, and according to a reporter from the Smithsonian who was excited to try it, taste a little bit like rubber and kind of like congealed gravy. So not the worst taste exactly, but not exactly appetizing either.
Yeah, that's not a great sales pitch, right, So here's a super quick one. I know, we talked about narwals growing two tuss and I was curious how many of the narwals actually do this. Apparently it's more frequent than I was expecting. About one in five hundred male narwals will grow a pair of tuss. The other question that gets asked a lot is do female narwals grow tuss?
And the answer to that is also yes, about fifteen percent of female narwals grow tuss, which just goes to show you there's a lot of variation in nature.
All right, Well, since you wanted to talk about the tusk again, I don't know if you've noticed we keep coming back to the touch. Let's talk about how narwals are sometimes called the unicorn of the sea. So the Latin name for narwals, Monodon monicros, means one tooth, one horn.
It sounds like a like a rallying cry, let's go to battle with one tooth.
One tooth, one horn. You just kind of go. You don't question it, you just say it loud, and then you do whatever happens after that. But back in the Middle Ages, every land animal was believed to have a counterpart from the sea, and because people desperately wanted to believe in unicorns, especially the Scottish people, where the unicorn is still the national animal. As soon as this tust whale was discovered, it was used to bolster the case
for unicorns. But it wasn't long before these tusts were passed off as genuine unicorn horns. The tusk, as we mentioned, are really beautiful in the way they're spiraled and long, so Vikings and other traders could pass them off as unicorn horns and sell them for ten times their weight
in gold. Now, of course, for buyers, just having a unicorn horn and your cabinet of curiosities might be exciting, but there was also a myth that unicorn horns could neutralize poisons and cure depression several other things, so they were often turned into cups for royalty and carved into other supposedly magical items. In fact, one of the more expensive narwald tusk was the one that Queen Elizabeth received
from an explorer of her court. The gift was bejeweled and carved, and at the time it was worth ten thousand pounds sterling, which, according to the site Majestic Whale Encounters, which was the equivalent cost of a modest castle at the time, or a little more than four million pounds today.
Oh wow, I like the idea of trading a horn for a castle.
It's pretty great. Yeah, it's just a modesele to me, exactly.
Well, I know we've got to throw to break, but we'll be back with more.
Facts in just a minute.
Welcome back to Part time Genius. We're talking all things narwal All right, Mango, what factor are you gonna end with today?
Well, one of the things you mentioned at the top was that Belugas and narwals are cousins. And there's actually an interesting story that scientists have been following since twenty sixteen when a pod of beluga whales adopted a stranded narwhal.
So do narwals travel in pods? Too?
Yeah, just like whales, they travel together. They travel in groups of fifteen to twenty, and it's to keep them safe from predators like killer whales, polar bears, and walruses. So narwals are used to traveling in groups. But apparently this adopted narwhal just turned twelve years old, which is exciting because it means we can help throw bar mitzva
next year as long as it learns. You know, it's half torah a portion, But actually entering its teens means that the narwal goes from being a boy to man, and scientists are excited about this because they want to know whether the narwal will mate with some of these belugas to create what's called a nar luga.
A nar luga. So are nar luga's actually a thing?
Yeah, Apparently in the nineteen eighties, this Inuit hunter found this distinct skull and he couldn't quite tell what it was, so he gave it to a museum. Museums also couldn't figure it out. It wasn't until twenty eighteen that DNA testing showed that nar walls and belugas could actually mate and have offspring. Anyway, it's unclear whether a baby narluga will be sterile like a male lager or actually be fertile like a female lagger, which is obviously a mix
of a line and a tiger. But for scientists it's super exciting to watch the flirting and play and mating rituals take place and to follow this Narwall in his journey.
All right, well, if a nar Luga is born, I'm sure the internet will be all over it. And speaking of which, my last fact is about a rescue puppy that was originally abandoned in the dead of winter in Missouri and took the socials by storm. It was a puppy born with a tail on its forehead, and it was of course named Narwal.
Oh. I remember Narwal. He was like a real Internet celebrity for a minute. I remember, like Zach Braf was tweeting about him. But how is Narwhal doing?
Apparently doing just fine. Like when he was put up for adoption, three hundred thousand applications came in to adopt him, but he was also at risk. You know, some people saw him as an abomination and came to the shelter demanding that he be euthanized, which is of course just awful. It's strange that people would feel that way. But after
protecting him vigilantly for a few months. The mom who fostered him ultimately decided to keep him, and today he's a rescue spokesdog for the shelter that took him in, and everyone talks about his wonderful attitude. But the thing I wanted to know about Narwal is how does a mutation like that actually happen? Like how does a dog end up growing a tail on its head?
I mean, the first thing I want to know is can Narwal wag his second tail?
Well, yeah, that was my first question too, but unfortunately no, he can't. But my second question was how he got that little nub on his forehead And the answer is that the vets don't really know. They think it was some sort of rare genetic mutation that caused it, or more likely, Narwal absorbed a twin from the womb and that's what actually caused it. But everyone, in all the
interviews with Narwal's owners is clear about two things. One he's doing great and two they have no intention of removing his spare magical tail.
Well, I am glad to know Narwal is doing so well and that Narwals generally are doing pretty well. So what do you want to do about today's trophy?
You know, I was thinking about this. I think I'm gonna have to give this one to you. I mean your narwal facts were pretty good, but that one about the New School how they almost made a cigarette its mascot, I mean that made my day.
You imagine seeing that on like a basketball court, sick around on the side, cheering you on. Well, thank you for that. I do want to let everyone know you and I are trying to give the audience more part Time Geniuses.
That means more.
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production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongagetikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by Wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay trustee
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