Narwhals: Unicorns of the Sea

the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. We're alone again naturally, but we're talking about in our walls. So things aren't all that bad because they're pretty interesting. Yeah. I think I wanted to do this a long time ago. Uh, and it just sort of fell off my radar and then it popped back up on my radar. That is a heck of a story, Chuck, and this was written. I want to shout out former colleague Katie Lambert. And Katie, even though you do not listen, perhaps a friend of

yours might congratulations because Katie just got married. Oh hey, congratulations, Katie, I'm married to uh it looks like a really good guy. And uh they're now traveling and uh whish Katie all the best. Yep, congratulations dudes, and thank you for writing this article, which was seemingly intended for elementary school students. Knew you get to say something. I was not going to say anything. It's adorably written. Let's say that. Well, if I remember correctly, she really liked nar walls, I

think so. I think she lobbied to write this one. In fact, So nar walls is defined as follows. I'm kidding nar waals wail with a horn pretty much actually, and I there are a lot of similarities here between walrus is, which we did in our walls, but they're not They're not very closely related if at all. Am I correct? Like walruses have nothing to do with whales, and then our wall is a type of whale and

much the same as like a beluga whale, right I believe. So, Yeah, they're small, they're pretty fast, well comparatively small, I should say pretty fast. Um, they live in extremely cold waters. But the thing about the nar wall, the thing that everybody knows about the nar wall, the thing that makes the nar wall so unique, is that it has a tusk, a unicorn horn basically that is frequently well over half the length of its of its body. Yeah, I mean some of those. So they can grow up to nine feet.

That's crazy. Yeah, because a male narwhale gets up to fifteen feet. So so you've got the fifteen feet of the small fast whale and then another nine ft of unicorn tusk sticking out. And it's a pretty interesting appendage frankly. Yeah, which you know, we'll save that for the third act. You know what they say, you introduce a unicorn horn in the first act, it has to kill somebody in the third. Is that right? Well, that's the old saying

about a gun in a movie. Okay, if you see a gun in the first act, it'll kill someone in the third. I always thought things just appeared randomly in movies. Is that not the case materialized? Yeah? No thought behind it, right, no reason, no rhyme. So the nar wall throughout history has been a very um I guess, not misunderstood, but

fascinating to people because it just looks so strange. If you've seen regular seafaring creatures, which already look a lot of them look very strange, but imagine back in like the Vikings days, when they see a nar wall stick that thing out. It really would get people's attention, and so it was written about in literature. Um at some point that people thought that there was a land equivalent equivalent to every marine animal, So like if there was

something at sea, there was a land version. Do you remember we did like a Sea Monsters episode we talked about that. Yeah. So the idea here is that that there may be a unicorn, a horse unicorn, because there was one in the sea. Yeah, and even if you found the narwhal in the sea, it wouldn't just prove unicorns, it would actually probably back it up. At the time, Yes, so there was this widespread belief that there was such

a thing as unicorn. And then the fact that the Vikings were going around trading with the the Inuit up north around Greenland, um and getting narwhal tusks and bringing them back and people were buying them as unicorn horns. It definitely it was like evidence like there you go, there's such thing as unicorns. We've never seen one, but I've I got the tusk right here in my chalice to counteract any poison somebody may have tried to give me. Right.

That was one of the things that was used for interesting. Yeah, and let's see I got two more. You ready for these? Hold your socks on because I'm about to knock them off. The Habsburg dynasty, their scepter had a narwhal tusk handle. Ivan the terribles um staff, I guess he had a walking stick made of narwhal tusk um. And if you look on the Royal coat of Arms for pharmacists in England you you will see a unicorn. All of those

are narwhal tusks or references to narwhal tusks. And how magical they were thought at the time because people bought and sold and used them as unicorn horns. Yeah. The more you know, right, is half the battle. So let's talk about this, this funny, fascinating creature. Uh. You'd want to go to Canada perhaps to view them. Um, maybe Greenland, maybe small barred m Thro's some seeds in there while you're at it. Uh, And they mainly try and navigate

what are called how do you pronounce that? Pollinia, pollinias, pollinias. I think so yes, I actually prefer that too. Pollinias, which Katie described as the equivalent of an oasis. In the Arctic, there these open water pools where otherwise there is ice and there is a lot of good feeding. Uh. This it's like a buffet table in those things. Yeah,

because we're talking like little oayses in ice. And when we say ice creaming ice forever and ever and ever, because nor Walls live in some of the coldest water is imaginable on planet Earth. Um. So when one of the in their whales, which means they have to breathe air like we humans, right, Um, So they have to travel from these things to these things, and they do so under ice. So they basically just navigate poll nias or poly nias um from place to place, follow their

food that way. Yeah. Another name that you might have heard is corpse whale, and this came from there. The adults have this kind of modeled black or dark gray and white coloring and some people might say it looks like like they're dead, right like liver or mortis. Do you remember that where like you know this, the blood just pools and collects at the body like in the skin of the corpse. Yeah, so corpse whale is a is a nickname. Uh kind of a not a very

nice one. Well no, actually, the word nar wall means corpse whale in Dutch and Danish. Yeah, nar is like the old Norse term for corpse and wall or vall is whale corpse white, like nar waal literally means corpse whale because up close they look like a dead body. Interesting, yeah, and kind of gross. So they don't have a dorsal fin, but they do have a dorsal ridge. A dorsal fin would would be um. They may have had one at one point, but it bumps into that ice, so now

it's a dorsal rit. Well, I say, now it might have always been, but I'm just speculating. No, I think you're right that natural selection might have taken care of that. Yeah, because not only does it allow them to swim under ice and follow their food, it keeps them from um

being attacked by orcas. Orcas have a full dorsal fin, so they can't get under ice or as close to ice as or as um nar walls can, so they can escape their predators and chase their food, which is like two things that natural selection would definitely be all about. All right, well, let's stay in by it then, Yeah, I think you should. They hang out in groups UM a lot of times, twenty to thirty, but when they migrate there can be hundreds or even thousands of them together.

And the ladies are a little bit smaller, about pounds and ten tott the dudes get up to about pounds and up to fift Yeah, but I mean that's not small, but for a whale, that's not It's not big at all. And they are fast, man, they're fast. And I also read I read this really great article in Smithsonian. Um. Let me see if I can find the name of

it um in search of the Mysterious Narwhal. And they talk about this um, these two biologists who are dedicated to like tracking and trapping and tagging and um pegging up with right keeping up with nar walls to try to estimate the population because no one has any idea how many narwhals they are there are, and so you don't know if they're dying off quickly or if there's

a lot more than we know. Who knows, um, but it was they were talking about how hard it is to capture these these whales to tag them, and how hard it is even to hunt them too, because they're so fast. They're fast, and they're real skittish, like they'll take off at the drop of a hat. They're fast and furious, too fast, too furious. Their tokyo drift. So this is one of the interesting creatures that scientific whose scientific name is all wrong. Um. The scientific name is

minodin mana serros, which means to one horn. Yes, and if you're gonna come up with a cleric for your D and D game, you could do worse than that one horn. I like that monoddin mano serros. I take your bag of plenty. Erry Lewis sounded. That's literally the only thing I remember from like the two times I play dn D take your bag of plenty, which you probably can't even do. People are gonna say you can't take a bag of plenty. Oh yeah, we'll get some

mail on that, But that's actually not true. One tooth one horn is not true at all. They have no horns and they have two teeth. That tusk, which we'll talk about later again in the third act. That is a tooth. It is which we can't say anything more about it apparently, but just believe us it's a tooth. What it does eat? What do they eat. They eat cold, cold, loving fish. Sounds pretty delicious to me. So these are

some of my favorite fish. Prepare for this cod salmon, which I mean like it doesn't even have to be dead yet, and I'll eat the salmon. God, harring have dude. Raw salmon is about as good as it gets. Yeah, but you gotta bite into a live fish. Yes, I would herring, which is great, especially pickled Halibit wonderful anyway. Shrimp and squid. Yeah, I'm not huge on squid these days, but all the other ones i'd be very happy with. Weren't you big on squid because it's a squid and awesome,

I'm not. I'm just not big on squid. I don't know the last time I had it, but I remember, I think I've just had too much rubbery squid is what it is, you know, Yeah, I hear you. So the problem is this, Chuck, Well, it's not really a problem. It's a problem for you and me if we're trying to track nar walls. But a lot of those fish, especially depending on the season they um, live on the bottom of the ocean, right, So that means that if you are in our wall, you've got to get down

to those fish. And these things have actually been tracked diving a mile down. Yeah, that's a long way, a mile down. So some of the early trackers that they put on these way these um nar whales. Before they realize how deep they dove, the track the tracking device would break. It just smashed under the pressure. But the narwhall's just going down eating some cod and coming back up and then going down and eating some cod a mile under the surface. Is just it's just it's crazy

to me. I'm I'm impressed by that. Yeah, And Katie talked a lot about the diving patterns not being understood. It sounds to me when reading through them, is that they're uh like not random, but there there are so many different reasons to dive, and depending on the time of year and where the fish are. Like, I don't know that there is a pattern. Well we yeah, we

just don't know yet. Yeah, exactly. So you want to take a break, yes, all right, we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to resume speaking about in our walls, all right, Chuck. So you said, like there doesn't seem to be a pattern, or we don't understand the pattern with diving. There's a

lot we don't understand about in our walls. But what's interesting is that it seems like it might not just be because we have so little access to them, because they live in these extraordinarily remote climbs that are really hard for humans to survive in. It's not just that, it's that they are also supposedly very very smart as well, like dolphin levels smart. Yeah, they um. They said that they do some things that only apes do, like recognize

themselves in a mirror, and she said understand abstract ideas? Yes, what what does that mean? So the closest thing I could see is that with understanding understanding abstract ideas, so how we encapsulate two in the written number two and that that that too is an abstract concept that doesn't actually mean to but it does to us because we've

all agreed on it. Apparently, uh odonto sets, which is the toothed whale that that they belong to, they've been shown to understand abstract concepts like that they've been They've been also found to be able to pass this stuff along from one generation to the next, which means that they have actual culture. Their culture survives, they have an actual culture. It's not just their their genes driving them to find more fish. Um, go have sex with that

other narwhal. Nothing like that. They're actually thinking and passing on like the stuff and the tricks that they learned to the younger generation. So they're exceedingly smart too. Yeah. And odonto uh adonta seed that is a toothed whale with danto I guess ing the tooth part right, like ord is it a danta seat, I said, a dante sette like machete. I think it's a danta seat, But yeah, you're probably gonna be wrong. Who knows. Uh. They echo locate,

which is interesting like bats do. So what they do is they you know, it's very dark down there where they swim a mile down and they still need to find these fish, so they produced the sound. They don't they don't have vocal cords like we do. Um. They think although they don't know. Like you said, there's been so little study because they're hard to catch and track

and trace. But they think they might make sounds to their nasal passages and then focus that in uh in there in this fatty structure called the melon, and then beam it out and then of course it because echo location. It travels as a sound wave bounces back after it hits like a salmon um back to their skull. They think the lower jaw are directly into the skull depending on the frequency, and then they go to salmon. Let

me go spirit, yes, spirit, No they don't. They just probably Yeah, they go after it with their mouths and save it for me because I picture nine feet of a big sushi. Right, But think about it, like if they just spear salmon on the end of this thing, they're like, oh, I hadn't thought this true. I can't really actually get to this now. Let me scrape it off on the ice and then hop up there with my mouth and there you go. It seems like a lot of problems, you know. Yeah, like they'd find it

dead normal with like twelve fish spirit. Right, it's like the saddest thing ever. Um, So you talked about the echo location. Did you say that that fatty deposits called the melon? The melon? It's so weird, but it's pretty It's it's understandable that they would echo locate because they're diving down into some some areas where there's like no

light whatsoever. But they think that in addition to um finding food like salmon or whatever, they use echolocation for communication to just basically simply to move through the water, and either depending on the species or species are capable of multiple frequencies. They if they are if they're trying to reach something from a long distance, they'll use a low wavelength echo. If they're trying to find something nearby, they'll use a high frequency echo. Um. It's pretty interesting.

And supposedly their brains started to grow from based on the fossil record, around the time they would have started to echolocate. That makes sense, Yeah, it does, because they're getting that much more information and they need to handle it process it. Hence they need a bigger brain. Supposedly their brain is second only to ours in size relative to body mass. Okay, relative to body mass, right, all right, that makes sense because when I first read that, that

makes total sense. So they think that they they don't know how long they can live, but there are some studies that indicate that they could live to be over

a hundred years old. There's one study um on the eyes on nar while eyes, which is sort of sort of a creepy way to figure this out, but a hundred and fifteen years old, and they aren't sure how many there are UM, but in Baffin Bay apparently they found over thirty thousand of them in Baffin Bay alone, which sounds like a lot, but UM, when you look at the scope of animal populations, it's not no and

they I mean they honestly have no idea. That's what this UM, these marine biologists are doing is is trying to figure out how many there are so that they can say, well, this is how many you should hunt UM. This is the maximum number that should be hunted a year. Because there are UM and we'll talk about it later,

but there are there is legal narwhal hunting UM. But it's it's the from the work of these people who are who are trying to track them to make sure that the population that we're not inadvertently ruining this population UM. That's one of the main reasons that they're doing, in addition to like just studying them. And they found a lot of stuff out already, like they mate, remember those poll nias. I mean, another way to put it is their cracks in extensive sea ice, right and that's where

they mate. Another way put it is their sex pools they are, there's sex pools polynia's um and so they'll mate in there, but they'll also frequently die in there too because there those the areas that they inhabit are so cold chuck, so like negative sixty degrees fahret height in some areas right that that's the wind temperature of the surface, So it is really cold um that that ice will form quickly. And if you're a norwhale and

you get stuck in the your toast, you're dead. Or if the ice these pollinia's ice over and there's not another one nearby, again, you're dead because you have to breathe, so you can't. You're gonna drown before you make it to the next pollinia. So they actually live in a really dangerous like right on the edge of survivability in

a lot of ways. And they think that they are very genetically um homogeneous, and they think that the reason why is that back in yes, basically, which is surprising for how smart they are, but they they think they're genetically homogeneous, and they think the reason why is that there were multiple die offs of narwhal's getting trapped in these frozen over pollinias, so much so that it had like a major impact on the diversity of their population,

and they faced an evolutionary bottle knick at one point, and then once the ice agended, they started to expand again, but they were a little dim as a result. That should be a new t shirt. I'm not in bred, I'm genetically homogeneous. Right, nice? Oh? Uh? Should we take another break? Sure? Let's man, because I think if I'm not mistaken, we're going to come back and talk about the tusk. Right. The tusk in Act three is going to kill somebody? Will it be you? All right? Josh?

Everyone has been speared by a tusk. It was me. I'm gonna have to carry on alone for the next ten years. It's really just a flesh wound. No, no, no, you're you're dead, feel betta. Uh. So Katie makes a point to talk about human teeth for a second. We won't go down that rabbit hole too much, um, except to say that human teeth are hard on the outside to protect the soft pulp and nerves and blood on the inside. Uh. And that is very important distinction, because

the narwhale is the opposite of that. Which is really interesting, was that a rabbit hole with the teeth. No, not not Chuck's version. Okay, Oh, I see what you're saying, because I think you did a great job. Thanks, But yeah, you set it up perfectly, Chucked. The normal has the opposite of that, like this sensitive part is on the outside and the hard part is on the inside, which is insane. Yeah, it's really interesting. There are ten million

tiny little holes on the surface of that tusk. Uh. And even though human teeth have these same holes are covered with enamel. But there are different theories on why the tusk would need to be sensitive, and they sound pretty good to me, Like that it's a sensor, Yeah, that that basically it's it's detecting things like salinity, water, temperature currents, maybe sure um or it might be able to um to detect atmospheric pressure above or barometric pressure

above the water, see where the weather is changing. There's all sorts of things that that it could be or it could do, and maybe it does multiple things. However, uh. Katie points out rightfully that very few females have these tusks at all. So if it's how important could it

be to their survival? If if most of the females don't even have them, right, so that led Darwin, and apparently his his hypothesis is still the most widely held one, that it's a secondary sex characteristic, like um, like moose antlers or something like that, like or how dear male deer have horns, like check out the size of my tusk, ladies that. But also it's like, hey, I'm a dude, you don't have these. You're a lady kind of thing, right,

Why would the females have them at all? Then? I don't know that's the weird thing, because something like of female normalls have these tusks. Yeah, I mean, some people have said that they use them to duel with one another, but um, there hasn't been a lot of evidence to point to that. No. And plus now that we know that they're actually sensitive on the outside, that just undermines

that even more. Yeah, they sometimes to still say they might use it as a way to establish dominance at least maybe it's different than fighting, right, And they do touch tusks, but supposedly it's gently and it's a it's a behavior called tusking. It's not hostile or aggressive. It's something else and we're not quite sure what it is.

But they don't think it's fighting sometimes, they've said, and there's no evidence for this that they use the tusk for breaking through ice or spearing prey, like I said earlier, But I don't. I don't know if those hold water. No. I think it's probably most likely that it has developed into some sort of antenna basically. But we didn't even talk about what the tusk actually is. Yeah. Well, I said it's a tooth early on, but it's a little bit more than it's a supertooth. It is a supertooth again.

It's like a nine foot long tooth that starts out in the narwhal's mouth and just grows upward and punctures its lip and just starts growing out and that screws out. Yeah, it does. The cork shows out. It's a a spiral. It's one of the only spiral teeth in the animal kingdom. Yeah, and the only straight one, which is really interesting because when you think of walruses or elephants um and all that ivory is is god that curved tusk, and this one is straight like a unicorn, which is what makes

it look so interesting. I think for sure. Yeah, it's straight and spiral. That's a unicorn, right, there. Uh, and there can be two of them too, right, yeah, because so the remember you said the name of the Latin name of the narwhale is incorrect because they don't just have one tooth. They actually have two teeth. It's just

one of them turns into a tusk. Well, sometimes I guess their genes can get all messed up because again, remember they have that evolutionary bottleneck um, and the other tooth can start growing too, so they might have two tusks that are actually they're not symmetrical, they're actually um, they actually are just basically two versions of the same thing.

But it's pretty rare when that happens allegedly. Yeah, and here's the fact of the show for me that we haven't done a fact of the show and while actually no, we haven't drink. Uh. The tusk is flexible. When I see that thing, it looks like a a broadsword, but this thing can actually bend up to a foot in any direction without breaking and goes borrowing. Did you think they were No? I didn't really give much thought to it. Yes,

I think I did. I think I did assume they were stiff, but then once I heard that they were flexible, I'm like, yeah, of course they'd have to be. That would hurt to just have that thing brittle and break off at the drop of the hats. You mean you haven't been going around in life wondering about the norwhal tusk, right and the rigidity. But think about that, man, if you bend it almost a foot back, I'll bet that would I feel like bending your fingernail back to the

degree you know, you think I would be worse. Even if that thing is as sensitive as it is, is it supposed to be well and it can break, So that's just like, oh man, yeah, but I wonder if the thing is not essential for survival. Is a narwhal without a tusk fine after it's broken off, or maybe they're like, thank god, right now I can eat like a normal whale and things getting in the way. I

felt so self conscious about it. Uh The norwhal is under threat because, like you mentioned and you went, hunters are allowed to hunt them because it's something that they've done since time immemorial, and uh so they are allowed to still hunt them in certain numbers. Sometimes they do this with the old fashioned way with harpoons, and sometimes they have rifles and um, I'm not sure how often this happens, but Katie does say sometimes they will shoot an ar wall only to have it sink dead to

the ocean floor or escape wounded. I'm sure that with all hunting that is a possibility. Yeah, And I think they found very recently there was like a bunch of slaughtered narwhale um who had just had their band name, had their tusks carved out, but the rest was just left to rot. So it's just a total waste by poachers. And they've done a pretty good job of cutting down

the illegal narwhale um trade. I've rey trade yet it's considered that, but I guess in the United States you can still sell it if it was in the country prior to the band, and I'm sure that probably extends to all ivory. I think some like an narwhal tusk sold for it was like a double tusk or something. It was actually down a lot because it used to

be a lot more back, especially in the medieval age. Yeah. Well, if you meet someone at a party and they have they brag about their brooch made of narwhale ivory, punch them in the face. You get them chuck. Uh. The Inuits though too. They do actually eat um, the top layer of skin and blubber. They're not um, they're not the poachers that we're talking about. No. No, that that

stuff is called muck tuck or mock talk. And it's extraordinarily essential for the um Native Inuits survival up there because they don't get a lot of sunlight, not a lot of limes growing around, and it's a excellent source of vitamin C and um. They actually we are able to survive up there by eating this stuff. So yeah, there's there's a lot of good reason for them to hunt, let alone just the cultural stuff. Um. But yeah, the

poaching is unjustifiable no matter who's doing it. Yeah, and then you know there that's the human side of things. There's also polar bears, walruses, orcas. They will all try if they can catch those fast dudes and ladies swimming under the water. They will definitely dine on them if given the opportunity, right, which again that orca has that dorsal ridge, not a fin, so they can conceivably get

away from orcas. Here's the thing. What happens when the climate changes and the sea I starts to melt a little bit all of a sudden, those orcas have been waiting there like I've been waiting a thousand years for this minute, and they go get you, and you're in our wall and you're in trouble and it's actually a big threat against our walls. Right now, they were um voted the mammal you know, yeah, the marine mammal least likely to survive melting ice flows. Wow, because they're just

so they're so dependent on them. Like, wherever the ice is, that's where the nar walls are at any given point in the year. That's where there their food is. That's that's where they they procreate, That's that's where they live. And if there's not ice flows, they're in trouble. Sad well, it wouldn't be a stuff should episode if we didn't end it on a bummer. That's right. Uh. If you want to know more about nar walls, you can type that word into the search bar at how stuff works

dot com. And since I said nar whale, it's time for listener mayo. I'm gonna call this oh interesting follow up from a long time ago. Hey guys, I'm from a Doncaster, England, which who knows, maybe that's pronounced as far as I know Denny's. He's from Denny's. Uh uh, it's in the north of the country, he says. I work for my local council as a repair and maintenance man, do a lot of driving around, so your show really

breaks up my day. And the folklore episode you spoke about swearing in the English, who's sticking two fingers up? You know, like we shoot the bird and they stick the two fingers up like an inverted peace sign or backwards peace sign. And he says, I have the reason for you right here. This salute dates back to the English long bowman who fought the French during the Hundred Years War uh, which is not a hundred years by the way. The French hated the English archers, who used

the long bow with such devastating effect. Any English archers who were caught by the French had their index and middle finger chopped off from their right hand, a terrible penalty for an archer. Yes, Daniel, it surely is. I love that. It's the worst penalty for an archer. This led to the practice of the English archers, especially in siege uh siege situations, taunting the French enemy with their continued presence by raising two fingers and the two fingered

salute meaning you haven't cut off my fingers. Pa ha finger ears Mm. That interesting. Yeah, I love that one. I hadn't heard that one before. That's what he says. And he says, by the way, guys have a son. I'm to have a son on the tenth of September. Oh. Nice, he's got it all scheduled out, I guess. So if you read it on the air, shout out to unborn Reggie Joshua Halifax. Great middle name, by the way, actually great name all around. And that's from Daniel Blue Halifax. Nice.

Thanks a lot, Daniel. That was a great letter. It was not from Halifax, no, but his last name is Halifax, so he probably could get a free house there. Right. Yeah, that's a good that's how it works. That's a good dumb joke. If you thank you. If you want to get in touch with us, like Daniel did, ah, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark. There's also s y s K Pod asked Chuck's at movie crush Pod on Twitter too. I'm on Instagram at joshuam

Clark as well. Uh, there's uh Facebook a plenty. Chuck's at movie Crush Pod on Facebook. Right yeah, Snapchatt us do whatever, So I'm not done. There's Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. There's Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's a Facebook bananza. You can also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. It is always showing this sitter home on the web. Stuff you should have dot com

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