In Praise of the Narwhal
The excellent William J. Broad writes in the Times about a startling discovery: the real function of the narwhal's tusk.
Scientists and mariners have long wondered about the function of the whale's staff, which can grow up to nine feet long. Theories have included breaking Arctic ice, spearing fish, piercing ships, courting females, digging for food, and fighting with other narwhals.
Now it turns out that the answer is very different: the narwhal's tusk is filled with nerve endings that make it, as Broad writes, "a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity...[whose] nerves can detect subtle changes of temperature, pressure, particle gradients and probably much else."
Says Martin T. Nweeia, a narwhal researcher and clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine—an unusual combination—"This whale is intent on understanding its environment. The tusk is not about guys duking it out with sticks and swords."
Which suggests how blind we can be when studying the world around us, how our theories about animals and the environment are really a sort of Rorschach test that tell more about us and our limitations of perception than they do about scientific truth. What would we do if we had a nine-foot tusk? Well, use it to impress women or to fight other men. What do the whales do? They use it to learn about the world around them in ways substantially more sophisticated than any comparable aspect of human physiology.
Which is also my way of saying that the time will come when we finally realize that the ongoing slaughter of whales is one of mankind's greatest crimes.
The real moral of the narwhal discovery? We should study these remarkable animals not just to learn about them, but to learn from them.
