Curious collections: Two-tusked narwhal - Natural History …
One has been depicted with two tusks. Narwhals, Monodon monoceros, are toothed whales that live mostly in Arctic coastal waters and inlets. Male and female narwhals only have two teeth, which are both in the upper jaw. The male’s iconic, spiralling tusk is in fact a canine tooth. It can grow up to three metres long.
Two Tusked Narwhal - Smithsonian Ocean
The narwhal tusk is actually one of two teeth. In males, the tusk protrudes from the upper, left lip. While most male narwhals have one tusk, in a few rare cases they can have two, like in the narwhal pictured below.
Meet the world’s weirdest whale | Smithsonian Institution
Narwhal expert Martin Nweeia and Smithsonian museum specialist Charles Potter, examine a rare double-tusked narwhal specimen in the National Museum of Natural History collections. Always spiraling in a counterclockwise direction and weighing as much as 22 pounds, this giant tooth erupts on the left side of the narwhal’s mouth.
Narwhal - Wikipedia
The narwhal (Monodon monoceros) is a species of toothed whale native to the Arctic. It is the only member of the genus Monodon and one of two living representatives of the family Monodontidae. The narwhal has a similar build to the closely related beluga whale, with which it overlaps in range and can interbreed.
The Mysterious and Rare Double-Tusked Narwhal
The narwhal, a medium-sized toothed whale, is known for its long, spiraled tusk that juts from its head. However, in rare cases, some narwhals can grow two tusks instead of just one. This phenomenon is known as a two-tusk narwhal, and it occurs in about one in 500 males.
That’s One Weird Tooth - Science News
2006年3月21日 · The left tooth of a male narwhal develops into a tusk several meters long. It’s the only tooth known to spiral. Scientists are taking a new look at this dental marvel and collecting data from...
The Twists in the Narwhal's Horn | Geophysical Institute
2024年11月22日 · Distant observation of swimming narwhals shows that their "horns" are surely straight, for they move as well as their dolphin cousins--even though they are following those mighty, twisted tusks.
Secrets of the narwhal tusk — Harvard Gazette
2014年3月18日 · To Martin Nweeia, the narwhal — a mysterious whale with an off-center tusk — is much more interesting than the mythical unicorn. Now, eight years after he described the narwhal’s distinctive tusk as a sensory organ, the fascinating creature is coming into focus. Nweeia and his colleagues have mapped a sensory pathway between that spiral ...
Narwhal - WWF Arctic
There are even some narwhals with double tusks. Tusks also vary in shape and dimension – some are straight, others corkscrew-like, some are thin and delicate, others are short and thick. Scientists discovered that the tusk allows narwhals to sense salinity and water temperatures through porous parts of the tusk.
Mystery of world's strangest tooth solved | British Dental Journal
2006年1月14日 · Martin Nweeia, a researcher at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM), has answered a marine science question that has eluded the scientific community for hundreds of years: why does the...