{"id":23820,"date":"2025-03-12T13:22:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T14:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23820"},"modified":"2025-03-12T14:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T14:27:16","slug":"videos-show-narwhals-using-their-tusks-to-play-with-their-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23820","title":{"rendered":"Videos Show Narwhals Using Their Tusks to Play With Their Food"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Researchers observed a number of surprising behaviors by the ivory-sporting whales during an expedition with drones in the Canadian High Arctic.<\/p>\n

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For an animal with an ivory appendage half the length of its body protruding from the top of its head, a narwhal moves in the water with surprising grace.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost mesmerizing,\u201d said Greg O\u2019Corry-Crowe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University who studies marine mammals. \u201cThe precision with which they wielded their tusks, it wasn\u2019t like a broadsword. It was like a surgical instrument or the bow of a violin.\u201d<\/p>\n

In research published last month in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science<\/a>, Dr. O\u2019Corry-Crowe and colleagues make the case that narwhals aren\u2019t only showing off with their tusks \u2014 the appendages have a variety of demonstrated uses that help the animals survive in the ocean.<\/p>\n

The narwhal\u2019s tusk was an inspiration for unicorn myths. It\u2019s known that only males have them, with rare exception, and that a big tusk is something female narwhals look for<\/a> in a mate. But the animals have been difficult to study.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey\u2019re extremely shy and elusive whales,\u201d said Kristine Laidre, an applied animal ecology professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. \u201cThey\u2019re really hard to approach. They\u2019re really skittish.\u201d She added that narwhals tended to spend their time far from shore and diving deep into the water, and that doing research in the Arctic was logistically complex, making them a challenging species to observe in the wild.<\/p>\n

With the help of local Inuit communities, the team of researchers identified a spot in the Canadian High Arctic to set up camp and fly drones. The calm waters of Creswell Bay in Nunavut, where narwhals had previously been observed spending their summers, were shallow and clear and \u2014 combined with the 24-hour daylight in August \u2014 allowed the researchers to film some of the best footage of narwhals ever captured.<\/p>\n

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Researchers observed a number of surprising behaviors by the ivory-sporting whales during an expedition with drones in the Canadian High Arctic.For an animal with an ivory appendage half the length of its body protruding from the top of its head, a narwhal moves in the water with surprising grace.\u201cIt\u2019s almost mesmerizing,\u201d said Greg O\u2019Corry-Crowe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University who studies marine mammals. \u201cThe precision with which they wielded their tusks, it wasn\u2019t like a broadsword. It was like a surgical instrument or the bow of a violin.\u201dIn research published last month in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, Dr. O\u2019Corry-Crowe and colleagues make the case that narwhals aren\u2019t only showing off with their tusks \u2014 the appendages have a variety of demonstrated uses that help the animals survive in the ocean.The narwhal\u2019s tusk was an inspiration for unicorn myths. It\u2019s known that only males have them, with rare exception, and that a big tusk is something female narwhals look for in a mate. But the animals have been difficult to study.\u201cThey\u2019re extremely shy and elusive whales,\u201d said Kristine Laidre, an applied animal ecology professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. \u201cThey\u2019re really hard to approach. They\u2019re really skittish.\u201d She added that narwhals tended to spend their time far from shore and diving deep into the water, and that doing research in the Arctic was logistically complex, making them a challenging species to observe in the wild.With the help of local Inuit communities, the team of researchers identified a spot in the Canadian High Arctic to set up camp and fly drones. The calm waters of Creswell Bay in Nunavut, where narwhals had previously been observed spending their summers, were shallow and clear and \u2014 combined with the 24-hour daylight in August \u2014 allowed the researchers to film some of the best footage of narwhals ever captured.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23822,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23823,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23820\/revisions\/23823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}