In 1515, a rare "unicorn" set off from mysterious eastern India and arrived in Lisbon after a long four-month voyage, where King Manuel I of Portugal was ready to give it to the Pope. However, providence is unpredictable, and when it is about to arrive in Italy, the ship unfortunately sinks, and at the same time, the "unicorn" - the Indian rhinoceros is killed! The story of the unicorn spread throughout Europe, and Dürer created a print of Dürer's Rhinoceros.
Although land unicorns are buried on the seabed, with the advancement of the Age of Discovery, rumors of sea unicorns from the north have intensified. According to ancient Viking legend, there is a marine unicorn in the extremely cold lands of the north, and its spiral-shaped horns have magical effects. The "horn" of this "mythical beast" was truly revealed in 1577 by the English seafaring explorer Martin Frobisher, queen Elizabeth, who is today our protagonist Monodon monoceros.
This "horn" is very similar to the unicorn horn in the legendary story| Emma Brick / Wikimedia Commons
Floating "corpses" with mysterious horns
Friends who have a heart will find that a horned whale is called narwhale or narwale in English, whale means whale, and nar is often misunderstood as "northern", in fact, this nar means "corpse (nár)" in the ancient Norse Scandinavian language. The horned whale is one of the few whales without a dorsal fin. Newborn whales are usually light grey, then gradually darkened until they become almost completely black before weaning, then become more pale as they age, and become white with many spots in adulthood and old age.
In the era when navigation technology was not yet developed, there was no reliable lighting tool, so the watchman sailors of the ocean voyage mistakenly thought that the whale floating in the sea basking in the sun was a floating, corpse-spotted corpse! They got this somewhat obscure name.
The whale is covered with spots | пресс-служба ПАО "Газпром нефть" / Wikimedia Commons
As the name suggests, the horned whale has a "one-horned" structure that is different from other organisms, in fact, this horn is not a bony horn similar to the antler antler, nor is it a horn similar to the horn protein of a rhinoceros, the horn of the horned whale is a unique canine tooth, usually the left upper jaw of the male horned whale. When they are about 2 to 3 years old, the "boys" of the horned whale will "produce new teeth" like the permanent teeth of human children, and the canine teeth will continue to extend in a left-handed spiral, generally between 1.5 and 3.1 meters in length, weighing more than 10 kilograms, and compared with the average length of their males of 4.7 meters, the size of this giant tooth is breathtaking!
Male horned whale with peculiar tusks |пресс-служба ПАО "Газпром нефть" / Wikimedia Commons
About every 500 male whales will appear a "big koi" and grow two "long horns". However, less than 15% of female whales will grow "horns", which are generally smaller than the "horns" of males. It is more incredible that although a horned whale has such a strong tusk, its other tooth structure is seriously degraded, in other words, if it is a female whale that does not have "horns", it will become a "toothless person".
Tusks, what exactly is the use?
Then humans made many speculations about the "long horn" role of a horned whale. Initially, from Viking fishermen to European explorers, it was widely assumed that the tusks were used to break ice or poke fish, but females or juvenile horned whales without tusks could obviously still dive and fish without hindrance. Therefore, the inference that the horned whale tusks were used as an "icebreaker" was gradually abandoned later, and only existed as a kind of anecdotal rumor.
Hunters with the tusks of a horned whale | Wikimedia Commons
Subsequently, in scientific observations, it was found that a significant role of male tusks is as an "angular" force weapon for sexual selection. In the process of competing for the favor of the opposite sex, they will not be like the "land unicorn" Indian rhinoceros, who must fight to the death to stop the war. As a pacifist, a horned whale can compete by touching, rubbing tusks, or even just a few long-range gestures.
The "horns" of male horned whales function well understood as an ornament of sexual selection. But this also has a logical loophole, if it is only to undertake the work of sexual show-off, then why do some female whales also have "long horns"? This is a question that has puzzled us for hundreds of years, and until recently there have been some relatively more reasonable inferences: these tusks are "one horn dual-purpose" artifacts, and for males, their long horns are certainly beautiful decorations for pursuing the opposite sex, but as far as all one-horned whales are concerned, the long horns are the sensing organs of the surrounding seawater!
Occasionally, there are also two horned whales with two tusks | Wikimedia Commons
The tooth of a horn whale is different from the teeth of most mammals, and the periphery is not enamel, and is composed of tooth-like bone, dentin, and pulp. Studies have found that the teeth of a horned whale, whether it is the lateral dental bone, or the inner dentin, are covered with dense holes, which can lead to the nerve cells on the pulp (the nerve cells of the pulp are very developed, you can imagine the taste of pain when we have pulpitis), and perceive many information in the seawater, such as the salinity, temperature, pressure, etc. of the seawater.
This incredibly sensitive tusk may allow a whale to understand its surroundings and make timely judgments! In the polar environments in which they are located, it is easy to "lose" the breathable holes on the surface of the water after diving, such as floating away from the ice floes with breathable holes, or because of the freezing blockage. Because the ventilation holes cannot be found, the phenomenon of suffocation death occurs frequently.
Polar bears nibble on the carcasses of a dime whale | Paul Gierszewski / Wikimedia Commons
Magical Babies and unicorns
To the surprise of many people, the whale closest to the horned whale is actually another popular "white rich beauty" whale, the Beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas), which together with the horned whale form the Monodontidae .
It is very interesting that in a very fortuitous situation, these two species will actually cross each other to give birth to "string babies". In 1990, Mads Peter Heide-Jorgensen obtained a peculiar skull from Jens Larsen, an Inuit man from Greenland, with features somewhere between a dime whale and a beluga whale. Nearly 30 years later, genetic testing found that this is a very rare, natural combination of narwhals and beluga whales.
Beluga whale with cute brain gate | Soychipiron / Wikimedia Commons
The jaws of "string babies" have several small valgus teeth, which is a very critical identification point, because beluga whales have a complete tooth structure, while one-horned whales only have large tusks or no teeth at all. Unfortunately, the "string" is not really like a unicorn, with a dreamy appearance of both long horns and white skin, and according to the Inuit, the whale was gray when it was alive.
As early as 400 years ago, when Martin Frobisher paid tribute to a horned whale tooth, people regarded a horned whale tooth as an incomparably precious exotic treasure, and the price of a dime whale tooth at that time could even be worth a small castle. In the centuries that followed, whale-hunting vessels continued to extend their black hands to the horned whales, causing their numbers to plummet, and it was not until the middle and late of the last century that countries agreed to ban the import and export of horned whale teeth, which played a certain protective role in their survival.
The Royal Treasures Gallery in Schatzkammer, Vienna, exhibits include a scepter made of a dime whale's tooth | Florian Prischl / Wikimedia Commons
At present, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that the number of horned whales is about 123,000, due to the sudden change of polar climate and marine pollution, this magical marine "unicorn", the survival pressure is still very large, and our protection of the horned whale is still a long way to go!
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