Post #14025

Narwhal: Useless stick or magic staff? The Mystery of the Strange Whale's Horn Are there unicorns in Russia? Of course there are - narwhals! See for yourself: these are mysterious and beautiful animals that are hard to find, easy to lose and impossible to forget. They also have almost supernatural powers, which are directly tied to their mystical horns. Nature, however, looks at them differently. She is sure that narwhals are four-meter-long machines for processing sea reptiles and fish into fat. And the animals cope with their task simply miraculously well. An adult animal can contain up to a ton of fat - a third of its entire body weight! Such reserves are not a luxury, but a necessity; without them, one cannot survive under the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. Narwhals are inextricably linked to ice fields, so the size of their range varies greatly depending on the season. In summer they live in high latitudes, almost at the North Pole, and in winter they go much further south and can be found even off the coast of Eurasia. Including on the northern coast of Russia. And although it is dark under the ocean ice even on a polar day, this is not a problem for narwhals, because they rely on echolocation more than vision. Like bats, they emit high-frequency clicks and analyze the returning echo using their fine hearing. Thanks to this ability, they can detect schools of fish and schools of squid hundreds of meters away and never go hungry. However, many researchers believe that narwhals have another highly accurate device for finding prey - their legendary horn. Which is not a horn at all, but a spiral fang as thick as a wrist and 2.5 meters long. Despite its impressive appearance, the horn is absolutely useless in battle and hunting, because in its structure it is the most ordinary tooth with pulp and nerves, and, moreover, without enamel. But on its surface there are as many as 10,000,000 nerve endings of unknown purpose. Such a sensitive “nervous” tooth can be useful for the narwhal to subtly sense the movement of water around it, as well as its temperature and salinity. And due to its large size, the horn is incredibly sensitive to the slightest changes in the environment. However, not everyone agrees with the sensory theory. Proponents of the alternative idea believe that it is simply an extremely long tooth with no special pretensions. Its only purpose is to demonstrate the age and physical superiority of the male, and it has no practical use. During ritual fights, narwhals do not use their tusk. They jostle, hit each other with their tails, and the use of a spear would lead to the death of animals, which, obviously, is not necessary for the population. Therefore, the “horn” does not need a large strength - as long as it does not break off under its own weight. However, there are observations that narwhals stun fish with their horns with sharp blows, which makes hunting easier. But for us this is not important at all. The mo