June 28, 2018 • 35 mins
Narwhals are the unicorns of the sea. They're also whales with tusks. The tusks are really long tooths. Are you confused? Let us guide you!
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, we're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're going to be at
Salt Lake City's Grand Theater and then the next night
October will be in Phoenix. And we added a second
show to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second
earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the
information for all of these shows at s y s
(00:22):
K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
We're alone again naturally, but we're talking about in our walls.
(00:46):
So things aren't all that bad because they're pretty interesting. Yeah.
I think I wanted to do this a long time ago. Uh,
and it just sort of fell off my radar and
then it popped back up on my radar. That is
a heck of a story, Chuck, and this was written.
I want to shout out former colleague Katie Lambert. And Katie,
(01:09):
even though you do not listen, perhaps a friend of
yours might congratulations because Katie just got married. Oh hey, congratulations, Katie,
I'm married to uh it looks like a really good guy.
And uh they're now traveling and uh whish Katie all
the best. Yep, congratulations dudes, and thank you for writing
this article, which was seemingly intended for elementary school students.
(01:34):
Knew you get to say something. I was not going
to say anything. It's adorably written. Let's say that. Well,
if I remember correctly, she really liked nar walls, I
think so. I think she lobbied to write this one.
In fact, So nar walls is defined as follows. I'm
kidding nar waals wail with a horn pretty much actually,
(01:56):
and I there are a lot of similarities here between
walrus is, which we did in our walls, but they're
not They're not very closely related if at all. Am
I correct? Like walruses have nothing to do with whales,
and then our wall is a type of whale and
much the same as like a beluga whale, right I believe. So, Yeah,
(02:17):
they're small, they're pretty fast, well comparatively small, I should
say pretty fast. Um, they live in extremely cold waters.
But the thing about the nar wall, the thing that
everybody knows about the nar wall, the thing that makes
the nar wall so unique, is that it has a tusk,
a unicorn horn basically that is frequently well over half
(02:41):
the length of its of its body. Yeah, I mean
some of those. So they can grow up to nine feet.
That's crazy. Yeah, because a male narwhale gets up to
fifteen feet. So so you've got the fifteen feet of
the small fast whale and then another nine ft of
unicorn tusk sticking out. And it's a pretty interesting appendage frankly. Yeah,
(03:02):
which you know, we'll save that for the third act.
You know what they say, you introduce a unicorn horn
in the first act, it has to kill somebody in
the third. Is that right? Well, that's the old saying
about a gun in a movie. Okay, if you see
a gun in the first act, it'll kill someone in
the third. I always thought things just appeared randomly in movies.
(03:24):
Is that not the case materialized? Yeah? No thought behind it, right,
no reason, no rhyme. So the nar wall throughout history
has been a very um I guess, not misunderstood, but
fascinating to people because it just looks so strange. If
you've seen regular seafaring creatures, which already look a lot
(03:45):
of them look very strange, but imagine back in like
the Vikings days, when they see a nar wall stick
that thing out. It really would get people's attention, and
so it was written about in literature. Um at some
point that people thought that there was a land equivalent
equivalent to every marine animal, So like if there was
(04:07):
something at sea, there was a land version. Do you
remember we did like a Sea Monsters episode we talked
about that. Yeah. So the idea here is that that
there may be a unicorn, a horse unicorn, because there
was one in the sea. Yeah, and even if you
found the narwhal in the sea, it wouldn't just prove unicorns,
it would actually probably back it up. At the time, Yes,
(04:28):
so there was this widespread belief that there was such
a thing as unicorn. And then the fact that the
Vikings were going around trading with the the Inuit up
north around Greenland, um and getting narwhal tusks and bringing
them back and people were buying them as unicorn horns.
It definitely it was like evidence like there you go,
(04:48):
there's such thing as unicorns. We've never seen one, but
I've I got the tusk right here in my chalice
to counteract any poison somebody may have tried to give me. Right.
That was one of the things that was used for interesting. Yeah,
and let's see I got two more. You ready for these?
Hold your socks on because I'm about to knock them off.
The Habsburg dynasty, their scepter had a narwhal tusk handle.
(05:15):
Ivan the terribles um staff, I guess he had a
walking stick made of narwhal tusk um. And if you
look on the Royal coat of Arms for pharmacists in
England you you will see a unicorn. All of those
are narwhal tusks or references to narwhal tusks. And how
(05:37):
magical they were thought at the time because people bought
and sold and used them as unicorn horns. Yeah. The
more you know, right, is half the battle. So let's
talk about this, this funny, fascinating creature. Uh. You'd want
to go to Canada perhaps to view them. Um, maybe Greenland,
(06:02):
maybe small barred m Thro's some seeds in there while
you're at it. Uh, And they mainly try and navigate
what are called how do you pronounce that? Pollinia, pollinias, pollinias.
I think so yes, I actually prefer that too. Pollinias,
(06:22):
which Katie described as the equivalent of an oasis. In
the Arctic, there these open water pools where otherwise there
is ice and there is a lot of good feeding. Uh.
This it's like a buffet table in those things. Yeah,
because we're talking like little oayses in ice. And when
we say ice creaming ice forever and ever and ever,
(06:43):
because nor Walls live in some of the coldest water
is imaginable on planet Earth. Um. So when one of
the in their whales, which means they have to breathe
air like we humans, right, Um, So they have to
travel from these things to these things, and they do
so under ice. So they basically just navigate poll nias
(07:05):
or poly nias um from place to place, follow their
food that way. Yeah. Another name that you might have
heard is corpse whale, and this came from there. The
adults have this kind of modeled black or dark gray
and white coloring and some people might say it looks
(07:25):
like like they're dead, right like liver or mortis. Do
you remember that where like you know this, the blood
just pools and collects at the body like in the
skin of the corpse. Yeah, so corpse whale is a
is a nickname. Uh kind of a not a very
nice one. Well no, actually, the word nar wall means
(07:47):
corpse whale in Dutch and Danish. Yeah, nar is like
the old Norse term for corpse and wall or vall
is whale corpse white, like nar waal literally means corpse
whale because up close they look like a dead body. Interesting, yeah,
and kind of gross. So they don't have a dorsal fin,
(08:09):
but they do have a dorsal ridge. A dorsal fin
would would be um. They may have had one at
one point, but it bumps into that ice, so now
it's a dorsal rit. Well, I say, now it might
have always been, but I'm just speculating. No, I think
you're right that natural selection might have taken care of that. Yeah,
because not only does it allow them to swim under
ice and follow their food, it keeps them from um
(08:33):
being attacked by orcas. Orcas have a full dorsal fin,
so they can't get under ice or as close to
ice as or as um nar walls can, so they
can escape their predators and chase their food, which is
like two things that natural selection would definitely be all about.
All right, well, let's stay in by it then, Yeah,
I think you should. They hang out in groups UM
(08:54):
a lot of times, twenty to thirty, but when they
migrate there can be hundreds or even thousands of them together.
And the ladies are a little bit smaller, about pounds
and ten tott the dudes get up to about pounds
and up to fift Yeah, but I mean that's not small,
but for a whale, that's not It's not big at all.
(09:18):
And they are fast, man, they're fast. And I also
read I read this really great article in Smithsonian. Um.
Let me see if I can find the name of
it um in search of the Mysterious Narwhal. And they
talk about this um, these two biologists who are dedicated
to like tracking and trapping and tagging and um pegging
(09:43):
up with right keeping up with nar walls to try
to estimate the population because no one has any idea
how many narwhals they are there are, and so you
don't know if they're dying off quickly or if there's
a lot more than we know. Who knows, um, but
it was they were talking about how hard it is
to capture these these whales to tag them, and how
(10:05):
hard it is even to hunt them too, because they're
so fast. They're fast, and they're real skittish, like they'll
take off at the drop of a hat. They're fast
and furious, too fast, too furious. Their tokyo drift. So
this is one of the interesting creatures that scientific whose
scientific name is all wrong. Um. The scientific name is
(10:26):
minodin mana serros, which means to one horn. Yes, and
if you're gonna come up with a cleric for your
D and D game, you could do worse than that
one horn. I like that monoddin mano serros. I take
your bag of plenty. Erry Lewis sounded. That's literally the
(10:49):
only thing I remember from like the two times I
play dn D take your bag of plenty, which you
probably can't even do. People are gonna say you can't
take a bag of plenty. Oh yeah, we'll get some
mail on that, But that's actually not true. One tooth
one horn is not true at all. They have no
horns and they have two teeth. That tusk, which we'll
talk about later again in the third act. That is
(11:11):
a tooth. It is which we can't say anything more
about it apparently, but just believe us it's a tooth.
What it does eat? What do they eat. They eat cold, cold,
loving fish. Sounds pretty delicious to me. So these are
some of my favorite fish. Prepare for this cod salmon,
(11:32):
which I mean like it doesn't even have to be
dead yet, and I'll eat the salmon. God, harring have dude.
Raw salmon is about as good as it gets. Yeah,
but you gotta bite into a live fish. Yes, I
would herring, which is great, especially pickled Halibit wonderful anyway.
Shrimp and squid. Yeah, I'm not huge on squid these days,
(11:54):
but all the other ones i'd be very happy with.
Weren't you big on squid because it's a squid and awesome,
I'm not. I'm just not big on squid. I don't
know the last time I had it, but I remember,
I think I've just had too much rubbery squid is
what it is, you know, Yeah, I hear you. So
(12:15):
the problem is this, Chuck, Well, it's not really a problem.
It's a problem for you and me if we're trying
to track nar walls. But a lot of those fish,
especially depending on the season they um, live on the
bottom of the ocean, right, So that means that if
you are in our wall, you've got to get down
to those fish. And these things have actually been tracked
(12:38):
diving a mile down. Yeah, that's a long way, a
mile down. So some of the early trackers that they
put on these way these um nar whales. Before they
realize how deep they dove, the track the tracking device
would break. It just smashed under the pressure. But the
(12:58):
narwhall's just going down eating some cod and coming back
up and then going down and eating some cod a
mile under the surface. Is just it's just it's crazy
to me. I'm I'm impressed by that. Yeah, And Katie
talked a lot about the diving patterns not being understood.
It sounds to me when reading through them, is that
they're uh like not random, but there there are so
(13:20):
many different reasons to dive, and depending on the time
of year and where the fish are. Like, I don't
know that there is a pattern. Well we yeah, we
just don't know yet. Yeah, exactly. So you want to
take a break, yes, all right, we're going to take
a break and when we come back, we're going to
resume speaking about in our walls, all right, Chuck. So
(14:09):
you said, like there doesn't seem to be a pattern,
or we don't understand the pattern with diving. There's a
lot we don't understand about in our walls. But what's
interesting is that it seems like it might not just
be because we have so little access to them, because
they live in these extraordinarily remote climbs that are really
hard for humans to survive in. It's not just that,
(14:32):
it's that they are also supposedly very very smart as well,
like dolphin levels smart. Yeah, they um. They said that
they do some things that only apes do, like recognize
themselves in a mirror, and she said understand abstract ideas? Yes,
what what does that mean? So the closest thing I
(14:55):
could see is that with understanding understanding abstract ideas, so
how we encapsulate two in the written number two and
that that that too is an abstract concept that doesn't
actually mean to but it does to us because we've
all agreed on it. Apparently, uh odonto sets, which is
(15:16):
the toothed whale that that they belong to, they've been
shown to understand abstract concepts like that they've been They've
been also found to be able to pass this stuff
along from one generation to the next, which means that
they have actual culture. Their culture survives, they have an
actual culture. It's not just their their genes driving them
(15:38):
to find more fish. Um, go have sex with that
other narwhal. Nothing like that. They're actually thinking and passing
on like the stuff and the tricks that they learned
to the younger generation. So they're exceedingly smart too. Yeah.
And odonto uh adonta seed that is a toothed whale
with danto I guess ing the tooth part right, like
(16:01):
ord is it a danta seat, I said, a dante
sette like machete. I think it's a danta seat, But yeah,
you're probably gonna be wrong. Who knows. Uh. They echo locate,
which is interesting like bats do. So what they do
is they you know, it's very dark down there where
they swim a mile down and they still need to
find these fish, so they produced the sound. They don't
(16:24):
they don't have vocal cords like we do. Um. They
think although they don't know. Like you said, there's been
so little study because they're hard to catch and track
and trace. But they think they might make sounds to
their nasal passages and then focus that in uh in
there in this fatty structure called the melon, and then
(16:44):
beam it out and then of course it because echo location.
It travels as a sound wave bounces back after it
hits like a salmon um back to their skull. They
think the lower jaw are directly into the skull depending
on the frequency, and then they go to salmon. Let
me go spirit, yes, spirit, No they don't. They just
(17:06):
probably Yeah, they go after it with their mouths and
save it for me because I picture nine feet of
a big sushi. Right, But think about it, like if
they just spear salmon on the end of this thing,
they're like, oh, I hadn't thought this true. I can't
really actually get to this now. Let me scrape it
(17:26):
off on the ice and then hop up there with
my mouth and there you go. It seems like a
lot of problems, you know. Yeah, like they'd find it
dead normal with like twelve fish spirit. Right, it's like
the saddest thing ever. Um, So you talked about the
echo location. Did you say that that fatty deposits called
the melon? The melon? It's so weird, but it's pretty
(17:50):
It's it's understandable that they would echo locate because they're
diving down into some some areas where there's like no
light whatsoever. But they think that in addition to um
finding food like salmon or whatever, they use echolocation for
communication to just basically simply to move through the water,
and either depending on the species or species are capable
(18:12):
of multiple frequencies. They if they are if they're trying
to reach something from a long distance, they'll use a
low wavelength echo. If they're trying to find something nearby,
they'll use a high frequency echo. Um. It's pretty interesting.
And supposedly their brains started to grow from based on
the fossil record, around the time they would have started
(18:34):
to echolocate. That makes sense, Yeah, it does, because they're
getting that much more information and they need to handle
it process it. Hence they need a bigger brain. Supposedly
their brain is second only to ours in size relative
to body mass. Okay, relative to body mass, right, all right,
that makes sense because when I first read that, that
(18:56):
makes total sense. So they think that they they don't
know how long they can live, but there are some
studies that indicate that they could live to be over
a hundred years old. There's one study um on the
eyes on nar while eyes, which is sort of sort
of a creepy way to figure this out, but a
(19:16):
hundred and fifteen years old, and they aren't sure how
many there are UM, but in Baffin Bay apparently they
found over thirty thousand of them in Baffin Bay alone,
which sounds like a lot, but UM, when you look
at the scope of animal populations, it's not no and
they I mean they honestly have no idea. That's what
(19:39):
this UM, these marine biologists are doing is is trying
to figure out how many there are so that they
can say, well, this is how many you should hunt UM.
This is the maximum number that should be hunted a year.
Because there are UM and we'll talk about it later,
but there are there is legal narwhal hunting UM. But
(19:59):
it's it's the from the work of these people who
are who are trying to track them to make sure
that the population that we're not inadvertently ruining this population UM.
That's one of the main reasons that they're doing, in
addition to like just studying them. And they found a
lot of stuff out already, like they mate, remember those
poll nias. I mean, another way to put it is
(20:21):
their cracks in extensive sea ice, right and that's where
they mate. Another way put it is their sex pools
they are, there's sex pools polynia's um and so they'll
mate in there, but they'll also frequently die in there
too because there those the areas that they inhabit are
(20:43):
so cold chuck, so like negative sixty degrees fahret height
in some areas right that that's the wind temperature of
the surface, So it is really cold um that that
ice will form quickly. And if you're a norwhale and
you get stuck in the your toast, you're dead. Or
if the ice these pollinia's ice over and there's not
(21:06):
another one nearby, again, you're dead because you have to breathe,
so you can't. You're gonna drown before you make it
to the next pollinia. So they actually live in a
really dangerous like right on the edge of survivability in
a lot of ways. And they think that they are
very genetically um homogeneous, and they think that the reason
(21:28):
why is that back in yes, basically, which is surprising
for how smart they are, but they they think they're
genetically homogeneous, and they think the reason why is that
there were multiple die offs of narwhal's getting trapped in
these frozen over pollinias, so much so that it had
like a major impact on the diversity of their population,
(21:50):
and they faced an evolutionary bottle knick at one point,
and then once the ice agended, they started to expand again,
but they were a little dim as a result. That
should be a new t shirt. I'm not in bred,
I'm genetically homogeneous. Right, nice? Oh? Uh? Should we take
(22:11):
another break? Sure? Let's man, because I think if I'm
not mistaken, we're going to come back and talk about
the tusk. Right. The tusk in Act three is going
to kill somebody? Will it be you? All right? Josh?
(22:50):
Everyone has been speared by a tusk. It was me.
I'm gonna have to carry on alone for the next
ten years. It's really just a flesh wound. No, no, no,
you're you're dead, feel betta. Uh. So Katie makes a
point to talk about human teeth for a second. We
won't go down that rabbit hole too much, um, except
(23:11):
to say that human teeth are hard on the outside
to protect the soft pulp and nerves and blood on
the inside. Uh. And that is very important distinction, because
the narwhale is the opposite of that. Which is really interesting,
was that a rabbit hole with the teeth. No, not
not Chuck's version. Okay, Oh, I see what you're saying,
(23:33):
because I think you did a great job. Thanks, But yeah,
you set it up perfectly, Chucked. The normal has the
opposite of that, like this sensitive part is on the
outside and the hard part is on the inside, which
is insane. Yeah, it's really interesting. There are ten million
tiny little holes on the surface of that tusk. Uh.
(23:55):
And even though human teeth have these same holes are
covered with enamel. But there are different theories on why
the tusk would need to be sensitive, and they sound
pretty good to me, Like that it's a sensor, Yeah,
that that basically it's it's detecting things like salinity, water,
temperature currents, maybe sure um or it might be able
(24:18):
to um to detect atmospheric pressure above or barometric pressure
above the water, see where the weather is changing. There's
all sorts of things that that it could be or
it could do, and maybe it does multiple things. However, uh.
Katie points out rightfully that very few females have these
(24:38):
tusks at all. So if it's how important could it
be to their survival? If if most of the females
don't even have them, right, so that led Darwin, and
apparently his his hypothesis is still the most widely held one,
that it's a secondary sex characteristic, like um, like moose
antlers or something like that, like or how dear male
(25:01):
deer have horns, like check out the size of my tusk,
ladies that. But also it's like, hey, I'm a dude,
you don't have these. You're a lady kind of thing, right,
Why would the females have them at all? Then? I
don't know that's the weird thing, because something like of
female normalls have these tusks. Yeah, I mean, some people
have said that they use them to duel with one another,
(25:23):
but um, there hasn't been a lot of evidence to
point to that. No. And plus now that we know
that they're actually sensitive on the outside, that just undermines
that even more. Yeah, they sometimes to still say they
might use it as a way to establish dominance at
least maybe it's different than fighting, right, And they do
touch tusks, but supposedly it's gently and it's a it's
(25:45):
a behavior called tusking. It's not hostile or aggressive. It's
something else and we're not quite sure what it is.
But they don't think it's fighting sometimes, they've said, and
there's no evidence for this that they use the tusk
for breaking through ice or spearing prey, like I said earlier,
But I don't. I don't know if those hold water. No.
(26:06):
I think it's probably most likely that it has developed
into some sort of antenna basically. But we didn't even
talk about what the tusk actually is. Yeah. Well, I
said it's a tooth early on, but it's a little
bit more than it's a supertooth. It is a supertooth again.
It's like a nine foot long tooth that starts out
in the narwhal's mouth and just grows upward and punctures
(26:27):
its lip and just starts growing out and that screws out. Yeah,
it does. The cork shows out. It's a a spiral.
It's one of the only spiral teeth in the animal kingdom. Yeah,
and the only straight one, which is really interesting because
when you think of walruses or elephants um and all
that ivory is is god that curved tusk, and this
(26:48):
one is straight like a unicorn, which is what makes
it look so interesting. I think for sure. Yeah, it's
straight and spiral. That's a unicorn, right, there. Uh, and
there can be two of them too, right, yeah, because
so the remember you said the name of the Latin
name of the narwhale is incorrect because they don't just
(27:08):
have one tooth. They actually have two teeth. It's just
one of them turns into a tusk. Well, sometimes I
guess their genes can get all messed up because again,
remember they have that evolutionary bottleneck um, and the other
tooth can start growing too, so they might have two
tusks that are actually they're not symmetrical, they're actually um,
they actually are just basically two versions of the same thing.
(27:32):
But it's pretty rare when that happens allegedly. Yeah, and
here's the fact of the show for me that we
haven't done a fact of the show and while actually no,
we haven't drink. Uh. The tusk is flexible. When I
see that thing, it looks like a a broadsword, but
(27:52):
this thing can actually bend up to a foot in
any direction without breaking and goes borrowing. Did you think
they were No? I didn't really give much thought to it. Yes,
I think I did. I think I did assume they
were stiff, but then once I heard that they were flexible,
I'm like, yeah, of course they'd have to be. That
would hurt to just have that thing brittle and break
off at the drop of the hats. You mean you
(28:13):
haven't been going around in life wondering about the norwhal tusk,
right and the rigidity. But think about that, man, if
you bend it almost a foot back, I'll bet that
would I feel like bending your fingernail back to the
degree you know, you think I would be worse. Even
if that thing is as sensitive as it is, is
it supposed to be well and it can break, So
(28:34):
that's just like, oh man, yeah, but I wonder if
the thing is not essential for survival. Is a narwhal
without a tusk fine after it's broken off, or maybe
they're like, thank god, right now I can eat like
a normal whale and things getting in the way. I
felt so self conscious about it. Uh The norwhal is
(28:55):
under threat because, like you mentioned and you went, hunters
are allowed to hunt them because it's something that they've
done since time immemorial, and uh so they are allowed
to still hunt them in certain numbers. Sometimes they do
this with the old fashioned way with harpoons, and sometimes
they have rifles and um, I'm not sure how often
(29:17):
this happens, but Katie does say sometimes they will shoot
an ar wall only to have it sink dead to
the ocean floor or escape wounded. I'm sure that with
all hunting that is a possibility. Yeah, And I think
they found very recently there was like a bunch of
slaughtered narwhale um who had just had their band name,
had their tusks carved out, but the rest was just
(29:40):
left to rot. So it's just a total waste by poachers.
And they've done a pretty good job of cutting down
the illegal narwhale um trade. I've rey trade yet it's
considered that, but I guess in the United States you
can still sell it if it was in the country
(30:00):
prior to the band, and I'm sure that probably extends
to all ivory. I think some like an narwhal tusk
sold for it was like a double tusk or something.
It was actually down a lot because it used to
be a lot more back, especially in the medieval age. Yeah. Well,
if you meet someone at a party and they have
(30:20):
they brag about their brooch made of narwhale ivory, punch
them in the face. You get them chuck. Uh. The
Inuits though too. They do actually eat um, the top
layer of skin and blubber. They're not um, they're not
the poachers that we're talking about. No. No, that that
stuff is called muck tuck or mock talk. And it's
(30:45):
extraordinarily essential for the um Native Inuits survival up there
because they don't get a lot of sunlight, not a
lot of limes growing around, and it's a excellent source
of vitamin C and um. They actually we are able
to survive up there by eating this stuff. So yeah,
there's there's a lot of good reason for them to hunt,
(31:07):
let alone just the cultural stuff. Um. But yeah, the
poaching is unjustifiable no matter who's doing it. Yeah, and
then you know there that's the human side of things.
There's also polar bears, walruses, orcas. They will all try
if they can catch those fast dudes and ladies swimming
under the water. They will definitely dine on them if
(31:27):
given the opportunity, right, which again that orca has that
dorsal ridge, not a fin, so they can conceivably get
away from orcas. Here's the thing. What happens when the
climate changes and the sea I starts to melt a
little bit all of a sudden, those orcas have been
waiting there like I've been waiting a thousand years for
this minute, and they go get you, and you're in
(31:48):
our wall and you're in trouble and it's actually a
big threat against our walls. Right now, they were um
voted the mammal you know, yeah, the marine mammal least
likely to survive melting ice flows. Wow, because they're just
so they're so dependent on them. Like, wherever the ice is,
that's where the nar walls are at any given point
(32:10):
in the year. That's where there their food is. That's
that's where they they procreate, That's that's where they live.
And if there's not ice flows, they're in trouble. Sad well,
it wouldn't be a stuff should episode if we didn't
end it on a bummer. That's right. Uh. If you
want to know more about nar walls, you can type
that word into the search bar at how stuff works
(32:32):
dot com. And since I said nar whale, it's time
for listener mayo. I'm gonna call this oh interesting follow
up from a long time ago. Hey guys, I'm from
a Doncaster, England, which who knows, maybe that's pronounced as
(32:54):
far as I know Denny's. He's from Denny's. Uh uh,
it's in the north of the country, he says. I
work for my local council as a repair and maintenance man,
do a lot of driving around, so your show really
breaks up my day. And the folklore episode you spoke
about swearing in the English, who's sticking two fingers up?
(33:14):
You know, like we shoot the bird and they stick
the two fingers up like an inverted peace sign or
backwards peace sign. And he says, I have the reason
for you right here. This salute dates back to the
English long bowman who fought the French during the Hundred
Years War uh, which is not a hundred years by
the way. The French hated the English archers, who used
(33:35):
the long bow with such devastating effect. Any English archers
who were caught by the French had their index and
middle finger chopped off from their right hand, a terrible
penalty for an archer. Yes, Daniel, it surely is. I
love that. It's the worst penalty for an archer. This
led to the practice of the English archers, especially in
(33:56):
siege uh siege situations, taunting the French enemy with their
continued presence by raising two fingers and the two fingered
salute meaning you haven't cut off my fingers. Pa ha
finger ears Mm. That interesting. Yeah, I love that one.
I hadn't heard that one before. That's what he says.
And he says, by the way, guys have a son.
(34:17):
I'm to have a son on the tenth of September. Oh. Nice,
he's got it all scheduled out, I guess. So if
you read it on the air, shout out to unborn
Reggie Joshua Halifax. Great middle name, by the way, actually
great name all around. And that's from Daniel Blue Halifax. Nice.
Thanks a lot, Daniel. That was a great letter. It
was not from Halifax, no, but his last name is Halifax,
(34:41):
so he probably could get a free house there. Right. Yeah,
that's a good that's how it works. That's a good
dumb joke. If you thank you. If you want to
get in touch with us, like Daniel did, ah, you
can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark. There's
also s y s K Pod asked Chuck's at movie
(35:01):
crush Pod on Twitter too. I'm on Instagram at joshuam
Clark as well. Uh, there's uh Facebook a plenty. Chuck's
at movie Crush Pod on Facebook. Right yeah, Snapchatt us
do whatever, So I'm not done. There's Facebook dot com
slash stuff you should know. There's Facebook dot com slash
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's a Facebook bananza. You can
(35:24):
also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. It is always showing this sitter
home on the web. Stuff you should have dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com
Hey, everyone, we're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're going to be at
Salt Lake City's Grand Theater and then the next night
October will be in Phoenix. And we added a second
show to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second
earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the
information for all of these shows at s y s
(00:22):
K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
We're alone again naturally, but we're talking about in our walls.
(00:46):
So things aren't all that bad because they're pretty interesting. Yeah.
I think I wanted to do this a long time ago. Uh,
and it just sort of fell off my radar and
then it popped back up on my radar. That is
a heck of a story, Chuck, and this was written.
I want to shout out former colleague Katie Lambert. And Katie,
(01:09):
even though you do not listen, perhaps a friend of
yours might congratulations because Katie just got married. Oh hey, congratulations, Katie,
I'm married to uh it looks like a really good guy.
And uh they're now traveling and uh whish Katie all
the best. Yep, congratulations dudes, and thank you for writing
this article, which was seemingly intended for elementary school students.
(01:34):
Knew you get to say something. I was not going
to say anything. It's adorably written. Let's say that. Well,
if I remember correctly, she really liked nar walls, I
think so. I think she lobbied to write this one.
In fact, So nar walls is defined as follows. I'm
kidding nar waals wail with a horn pretty much actually,
(01:56):
and I there are a lot of similarities here between
walrus is, which we did in our walls, but they're
not They're not very closely related if at all. Am
I correct? Like walruses have nothing to do with whales,
and then our wall is a type of whale and
much the same as like a beluga whale, right I believe. So, Yeah,
(02:17):
they're small, they're pretty fast, well comparatively small, I should
say pretty fast. Um, they live in extremely cold waters.
But the thing about the nar wall, the thing that
everybody knows about the nar wall, the thing that makes
the nar wall so unique, is that it has a tusk,
a unicorn horn basically that is frequently well over half
(02:41):
the length of its of its body. Yeah, I mean
some of those. So they can grow up to nine feet.
That's crazy. Yeah, because a male narwhale gets up to
fifteen feet. So so you've got the fifteen feet of
the small fast whale and then another nine ft of
unicorn tusk sticking out. And it's a pretty interesting appendage frankly. Yeah,
(03:02):
which you know, we'll save that for the third act.
You know what they say, you introduce a unicorn horn
in the first act, it has to kill somebody in
the third. Is that right? Well, that's the old saying
about a gun in a movie. Okay, if you see
a gun in the first act, it'll kill someone in
the third. I always thought things just appeared randomly in movies.
(03:24):
Is that not the case materialized? Yeah? No thought behind it, right,
no reason, no rhyme. So the nar wall throughout history
has been a very um I guess, not misunderstood, but
fascinating to people because it just looks so strange. If
you've seen regular seafaring creatures, which already look a lot
(03:45):
of them look very strange, but imagine back in like
the Vikings days, when they see a nar wall stick
that thing out. It really would get people's attention, and
so it was written about in literature. Um at some
point that people thought that there was a land equivalent
equivalent to every marine animal, So like if there was
(04:07):
something at sea, there was a land version. Do you
remember we did like a Sea Monsters episode we talked
about that. Yeah. So the idea here is that that
there may be a unicorn, a horse unicorn, because there
was one in the sea. Yeah, and even if you
found the narwhal in the sea, it wouldn't just prove unicorns,
it would actually probably back it up. At the time, Yes,
(04:28):
so there was this widespread belief that there was such
a thing as unicorn. And then the fact that the
Vikings were going around trading with the the Inuit up
north around Greenland, um and getting narwhal tusks and bringing
them back and people were buying them as unicorn horns.
It definitely it was like evidence like there you go,
(04:48):
there's such thing as unicorns. We've never seen one, but
I've I got the tusk right here in my chalice
to counteract any poison somebody may have tried to give me. Right.
That was one of the things that was used for interesting. Yeah,
and let's see I got two more. You ready for these?
Hold your socks on because I'm about to knock them off.
The Habsburg dynasty, their scepter had a narwhal tusk handle.
(05:15):
Ivan the terribles um staff, I guess he had a
walking stick made of narwhal tusk um. And if you
look on the Royal coat of Arms for pharmacists in
England you you will see a unicorn. All of those
are narwhal tusks or references to narwhal tusks. And how
(05:37):
magical they were thought at the time because people bought
and sold and used them as unicorn horns. Yeah. The
more you know, right, is half the battle. So let's
talk about this, this funny, fascinating creature. Uh. You'd want
to go to Canada perhaps to view them. Um, maybe Greenland,
(06:02):
maybe small barred m Thro's some seeds in there while
you're at it. Uh, And they mainly try and navigate
what are called how do you pronounce that? Pollinia, pollinias, pollinias.
I think so yes, I actually prefer that too. Pollinias,
(06:22):
which Katie described as the equivalent of an oasis. In
the Arctic, there these open water pools where otherwise there
is ice and there is a lot of good feeding. Uh.
This it's like a buffet table in those things. Yeah,
because we're talking like little oayses in ice. And when
we say ice creaming ice forever and ever and ever,
(06:43):
because nor Walls live in some of the coldest water
is imaginable on planet Earth. Um. So when one of
the in their whales, which means they have to breathe
air like we humans, right, Um, So they have to
travel from these things to these things, and they do
so under ice. So they basically just navigate poll nias
(07:05):
or poly nias um from place to place, follow their
food that way. Yeah. Another name that you might have
heard is corpse whale, and this came from there. The
adults have this kind of modeled black or dark gray
and white coloring and some people might say it looks
(07:25):
like like they're dead, right like liver or mortis. Do
you remember that where like you know this, the blood
just pools and collects at the body like in the
skin of the corpse. Yeah, so corpse whale is a
is a nickname. Uh kind of a not a very
nice one. Well no, actually, the word nar wall means
(07:47):
corpse whale in Dutch and Danish. Yeah, nar is like
the old Norse term for corpse and wall or vall
is whale corpse white, like nar waal literally means corpse
whale because up close they look like a dead body. Interesting, yeah,
and kind of gross. So they don't have a dorsal fin,
(08:09):
but they do have a dorsal ridge. A dorsal fin
would would be um. They may have had one at
one point, but it bumps into that ice, so now
it's a dorsal rit. Well, I say, now it might
have always been, but I'm just speculating. No, I think
you're right that natural selection might have taken care of that. Yeah,
because not only does it allow them to swim under
ice and follow their food, it keeps them from um
(08:33):
being attacked by orcas. Orcas have a full dorsal fin,
so they can't get under ice or as close to
ice as or as um nar walls can, so they
can escape their predators and chase their food, which is
like two things that natural selection would definitely be all about.
All right, well, let's stay in by it then, Yeah,
I think you should. They hang out in groups UM
(08:54):
a lot of times, twenty to thirty, but when they
migrate there can be hundreds or even thousands of them together.
And the ladies are a little bit smaller, about pounds
and ten tott the dudes get up to about pounds
and up to fift Yeah, but I mean that's not small,
but for a whale, that's not It's not big at all.
(09:18):
And they are fast, man, they're fast. And I also
read I read this really great article in Smithsonian. Um.
Let me see if I can find the name of
it um in search of the Mysterious Narwhal. And they
talk about this um, these two biologists who are dedicated
to like tracking and trapping and tagging and um pegging
(09:43):
up with right keeping up with nar walls to try
to estimate the population because no one has any idea
how many narwhals they are there are, and so you
don't know if they're dying off quickly or if there's
a lot more than we know. Who knows, um, but
it was they were talking about how hard it is
to capture these these whales to tag them, and how
(10:05):
hard it is even to hunt them too, because they're
so fast. They're fast, and they're real skittish, like they'll
take off at the drop of a hat. They're fast
and furious, too fast, too furious. Their tokyo drift. So
this is one of the interesting creatures that scientific whose
scientific name is all wrong. Um. The scientific name is
(10:26):
minodin mana serros, which means to one horn. Yes, and
if you're gonna come up with a cleric for your
D and D game, you could do worse than that
one horn. I like that monoddin mano serros. I take
your bag of plenty. Erry Lewis sounded. That's literally the
(10:49):
only thing I remember from like the two times I
play dn D take your bag of plenty, which you
probably can't even do. People are gonna say you can't
take a bag of plenty. Oh yeah, we'll get some
mail on that, But that's actually not true. One tooth
one horn is not true at all. They have no
horns and they have two teeth. That tusk, which we'll
talk about later again in the third act. That is
(11:11):
a tooth. It is which we can't say anything more
about it apparently, but just believe us it's a tooth.
What it does eat? What do they eat. They eat cold, cold,
loving fish. Sounds pretty delicious to me. So these are
some of my favorite fish. Prepare for this cod salmon,
(11:32):
which I mean like it doesn't even have to be
dead yet, and I'll eat the salmon. God, harring have dude.
Raw salmon is about as good as it gets. Yeah,
but you gotta bite into a live fish. Yes, I
would herring, which is great, especially pickled Halibit wonderful anyway.
Shrimp and squid. Yeah, I'm not huge on squid these days,
(11:54):
but all the other ones i'd be very happy with.
Weren't you big on squid because it's a squid and awesome,
I'm not. I'm just not big on squid. I don't
know the last time I had it, but I remember,
I think I've just had too much rubbery squid is
what it is, you know, Yeah, I hear you. So
(12:15):
the problem is this, Chuck, Well, it's not really a problem.
It's a problem for you and me if we're trying
to track nar walls. But a lot of those fish,
especially depending on the season they um, live on the
bottom of the ocean, right, So that means that if
you are in our wall, you've got to get down
to those fish. And these things have actually been tracked
(12:38):
diving a mile down. Yeah, that's a long way, a
mile down. So some of the early trackers that they
put on these way these um nar whales. Before they
realize how deep they dove, the track the tracking device
would break. It just smashed under the pressure. But the
(12:58):
narwhall's just going down eating some cod and coming back
up and then going down and eating some cod a
mile under the surface. Is just it's just it's crazy
to me. I'm I'm impressed by that. Yeah, And Katie
talked a lot about the diving patterns not being understood.
It sounds to me when reading through them, is that
they're uh like not random, but there there are so
(13:20):
many different reasons to dive, and depending on the time
of year and where the fish are. Like, I don't
know that there is a pattern. Well we yeah, we
just don't know yet. Yeah, exactly. So you want to
take a break, yes, all right, we're going to take
a break and when we come back, we're going to
resume speaking about in our walls, all right, Chuck. So
(14:09):
you said, like there doesn't seem to be a pattern,
or we don't understand the pattern with diving. There's a
lot we don't understand about in our walls. But what's
interesting is that it seems like it might not just
be because we have so little access to them, because
they live in these extraordinarily remote climbs that are really
hard for humans to survive in. It's not just that,
(14:32):
it's that they are also supposedly very very smart as well,
like dolphin levels smart. Yeah, they um. They said that
they do some things that only apes do, like recognize
themselves in a mirror, and she said understand abstract ideas? Yes,
what what does that mean? So the closest thing I
(14:55):
could see is that with understanding understanding abstract ideas, so
how we encapsulate two in the written number two and
that that that too is an abstract concept that doesn't
actually mean to but it does to us because we've
all agreed on it. Apparently, uh odonto sets, which is
(15:16):
the toothed whale that that they belong to, they've been
shown to understand abstract concepts like that they've been They've
been also found to be able to pass this stuff
along from one generation to the next, which means that
they have actual culture. Their culture survives, they have an
actual culture. It's not just their their genes driving them
(15:38):
to find more fish. Um, go have sex with that
other narwhal. Nothing like that. They're actually thinking and passing
on like the stuff and the tricks that they learned
to the younger generation. So they're exceedingly smart too. Yeah.
And odonto uh adonta seed that is a toothed whale
with danto I guess ing the tooth part right, like
(16:01):
ord is it a danta seat, I said, a dante
sette like machete. I think it's a danta seat, But yeah,
you're probably gonna be wrong. Who knows. Uh. They echo locate,
which is interesting like bats do. So what they do
is they you know, it's very dark down there where
they swim a mile down and they still need to
find these fish, so they produced the sound. They don't
(16:24):
they don't have vocal cords like we do. Um. They
think although they don't know. Like you said, there's been
so little study because they're hard to catch and track
and trace. But they think they might make sounds to
their nasal passages and then focus that in uh in
there in this fatty structure called the melon, and then
(16:44):
beam it out and then of course it because echo location.
It travels as a sound wave bounces back after it
hits like a salmon um back to their skull. They
think the lower jaw are directly into the skull depending
on the frequency, and then they go to salmon. Let
me go spirit, yes, spirit, No they don't. They just
(17:06):
probably Yeah, they go after it with their mouths and
save it for me because I picture nine feet of
a big sushi. Right, But think about it, like if
they just spear salmon on the end of this thing,
they're like, oh, I hadn't thought this true. I can't
really actually get to this now. Let me scrape it
(17:26):
off on the ice and then hop up there with
my mouth and there you go. It seems like a
lot of problems, you know. Yeah, like they'd find it
dead normal with like twelve fish spirit. Right, it's like
the saddest thing ever. Um, So you talked about the
echo location. Did you say that that fatty deposits called
the melon? The melon? It's so weird, but it's pretty
(17:50):
It's it's understandable that they would echo locate because they're
diving down into some some areas where there's like no
light whatsoever. But they think that in addition to um
finding food like salmon or whatever, they use echolocation for
communication to just basically simply to move through the water,
and either depending on the species or species are capable
(18:12):
of multiple frequencies. They if they are if they're trying
to reach something from a long distance, they'll use a
low wavelength echo. If they're trying to find something nearby,
they'll use a high frequency echo. Um. It's pretty interesting.
And supposedly their brains started to grow from based on
the fossil record, around the time they would have started
(18:34):
to echolocate. That makes sense, Yeah, it does, because they're
getting that much more information and they need to handle
it process it. Hence they need a bigger brain. Supposedly
their brain is second only to ours in size relative
to body mass. Okay, relative to body mass, right, all right,
that makes sense because when I first read that, that
(18:56):
makes total sense. So they think that they they don't
know how long they can live, but there are some
studies that indicate that they could live to be over
a hundred years old. There's one study um on the
eyes on nar while eyes, which is sort of sort
of a creepy way to figure this out, but a
(19:16):
hundred and fifteen years old, and they aren't sure how
many there are UM, but in Baffin Bay apparently they
found over thirty thousand of them in Baffin Bay alone,
which sounds like a lot, but UM, when you look
at the scope of animal populations, it's not no and
they I mean they honestly have no idea. That's what
(19:39):
this UM, these marine biologists are doing is is trying
to figure out how many there are so that they
can say, well, this is how many you should hunt UM.
This is the maximum number that should be hunted a year.
Because there are UM and we'll talk about it later,
but there are there is legal narwhal hunting UM. But
(19:59):
it's it's the from the work of these people who
are who are trying to track them to make sure
that the population that we're not inadvertently ruining this population UM.
That's one of the main reasons that they're doing, in
addition to like just studying them. And they found a
lot of stuff out already, like they mate, remember those
poll nias. I mean, another way to put it is
(20:21):
their cracks in extensive sea ice, right and that's where
they mate. Another way put it is their sex pools
they are, there's sex pools polynia's um and so they'll
mate in there, but they'll also frequently die in there
too because there those the areas that they inhabit are
(20:43):
so cold chuck, so like negative sixty degrees fahret height
in some areas right that that's the wind temperature of
the surface, So it is really cold um that that
ice will form quickly. And if you're a norwhale and
you get stuck in the your toast, you're dead. Or
if the ice these pollinia's ice over and there's not
(21:06):
another one nearby, again, you're dead because you have to breathe,
so you can't. You're gonna drown before you make it
to the next pollinia. So they actually live in a
really dangerous like right on the edge of survivability in
a lot of ways. And they think that they are
very genetically um homogeneous, and they think that the reason
(21:28):
why is that back in yes, basically, which is surprising
for how smart they are, but they they think they're
genetically homogeneous, and they think the reason why is that
there were multiple die offs of narwhal's getting trapped in
these frozen over pollinias, so much so that it had
like a major impact on the diversity of their population,
(21:50):
and they faced an evolutionary bottle knick at one point,
and then once the ice agended, they started to expand again,
but they were a little dim as a result. That
should be a new t shirt. I'm not in bred,
I'm genetically homogeneous. Right, nice? Oh? Uh? Should we take
(22:11):
another break? Sure? Let's man, because I think if I'm
not mistaken, we're going to come back and talk about
the tusk. Right. The tusk in Act three is going
to kill somebody? Will it be you? All right? Josh?
(22:50):
Everyone has been speared by a tusk. It was me.
I'm gonna have to carry on alone for the next
ten years. It's really just a flesh wound. No, no, no,
you're you're dead, feel betta. Uh. So Katie makes a
point to talk about human teeth for a second. We
won't go down that rabbit hole too much, um, except
(23:11):
to say that human teeth are hard on the outside
to protect the soft pulp and nerves and blood on
the inside. Uh. And that is very important distinction, because
the narwhale is the opposite of that. Which is really interesting,
was that a rabbit hole with the teeth. No, not
not Chuck's version. Okay, Oh, I see what you're saying,
(23:33):
because I think you did a great job. Thanks, But yeah,
you set it up perfectly, Chucked. The normal has the
opposite of that, like this sensitive part is on the
outside and the hard part is on the inside, which
is insane. Yeah, it's really interesting. There are ten million
tiny little holes on the surface of that tusk. Uh.
(23:55):
And even though human teeth have these same holes are
covered with enamel. But there are different theories on why
the tusk would need to be sensitive, and they sound
pretty good to me, Like that it's a sensor, Yeah,
that that basically it's it's detecting things like salinity, water,
temperature currents, maybe sure um or it might be able
(24:18):
to um to detect atmospheric pressure above or barometric pressure
above the water, see where the weather is changing. There's
all sorts of things that that it could be or
it could do, and maybe it does multiple things. However, uh.
Katie points out rightfully that very few females have these
(24:38):
tusks at all. So if it's how important could it
be to their survival? If if most of the females
don't even have them, right, so that led Darwin, and
apparently his his hypothesis is still the most widely held one,
that it's a secondary sex characteristic, like um, like moose
antlers or something like that, like or how dear male
(25:01):
deer have horns, like check out the size of my tusk,
ladies that. But also it's like, hey, I'm a dude,
you don't have these. You're a lady kind of thing, right,
Why would the females have them at all? Then? I
don't know that's the weird thing, because something like of
female normalls have these tusks. Yeah, I mean, some people
have said that they use them to duel with one another,
(25:23):
but um, there hasn't been a lot of evidence to
point to that. No. And plus now that we know
that they're actually sensitive on the outside, that just undermines
that even more. Yeah, they sometimes to still say they
might use it as a way to establish dominance at
least maybe it's different than fighting, right, And they do
touch tusks, but supposedly it's gently and it's a it's
(25:45):
a behavior called tusking. It's not hostile or aggressive. It's
something else and we're not quite sure what it is.
But they don't think it's fighting sometimes, they've said, and
there's no evidence for this that they use the tusk
for breaking through ice or spearing prey, like I said earlier,
But I don't. I don't know if those hold water. No.
(26:06):
I think it's probably most likely that it has developed
into some sort of antenna basically. But we didn't even
talk about what the tusk actually is. Yeah. Well, I
said it's a tooth early on, but it's a little
bit more than it's a supertooth. It is a supertooth again.
It's like a nine foot long tooth that starts out
in the narwhal's mouth and just grows upward and punctures
(26:27):
its lip and just starts growing out and that screws out. Yeah,
it does. The cork shows out. It's a a spiral.
It's one of the only spiral teeth in the animal kingdom. Yeah,
and the only straight one, which is really interesting because
when you think of walruses or elephants um and all
that ivory is is god that curved tusk, and this
(26:48):
one is straight like a unicorn, which is what makes
it look so interesting. I think for sure. Yeah, it's
straight and spiral. That's a unicorn, right, there. Uh, and
there can be two of them too, right, yeah, because
so the remember you said the name of the Latin
name of the narwhale is incorrect because they don't just
(27:08):
have one tooth. They actually have two teeth. It's just
one of them turns into a tusk. Well, sometimes I
guess their genes can get all messed up because again,
remember they have that evolutionary bottleneck um, and the other
tooth can start growing too, so they might have two
tusks that are actually they're not symmetrical, they're actually um,
they actually are just basically two versions of the same thing.
(27:32):
But it's pretty rare when that happens allegedly. Yeah, and
here's the fact of the show for me that we
haven't done a fact of the show and while actually no,
we haven't drink. Uh. The tusk is flexible. When I
see that thing, it looks like a a broadsword, but
(27:52):
this thing can actually bend up to a foot in
any direction without breaking and goes borrowing. Did you think
they were No? I didn't really give much thought to it. Yes,
I think I did. I think I did assume they
were stiff, but then once I heard that they were flexible,
I'm like, yeah, of course they'd have to be. That
would hurt to just have that thing brittle and break
off at the drop of the hats. You mean you
(28:13):
haven't been going around in life wondering about the norwhal tusk,
right and the rigidity. But think about that, man, if
you bend it almost a foot back, I'll bet that
would I feel like bending your fingernail back to the
degree you know, you think I would be worse. Even
if that thing is as sensitive as it is, is
it supposed to be well and it can break, So
(28:34):
that's just like, oh man, yeah, but I wonder if
the thing is not essential for survival. Is a narwhal
without a tusk fine after it's broken off, or maybe
they're like, thank god, right now I can eat like
a normal whale and things getting in the way. I
felt so self conscious about it. Uh The norwhal is
(28:55):
under threat because, like you mentioned and you went, hunters
are allowed to hunt them because it's something that they've
done since time immemorial, and uh so they are allowed
to still hunt them in certain numbers. Sometimes they do
this with the old fashioned way with harpoons, and sometimes
they have rifles and um, I'm not sure how often
(29:17):
this happens, but Katie does say sometimes they will shoot
an ar wall only to have it sink dead to
the ocean floor or escape wounded. I'm sure that with
all hunting that is a possibility. Yeah, And I think
they found very recently there was like a bunch of
slaughtered narwhale um who had just had their band name,
had their tusks carved out, but the rest was just
(29:40):
left to rot. So it's just a total waste by poachers.
And they've done a pretty good job of cutting down
the illegal narwhale um trade. I've rey trade yet it's
considered that, but I guess in the United States you
can still sell it if it was in the country
(30:00):
prior to the band, and I'm sure that probably extends
to all ivory. I think some like an narwhal tusk
sold for it was like a double tusk or something.
It was actually down a lot because it used to
be a lot more back, especially in the medieval age. Yeah. Well,
if you meet someone at a party and they have
(30:20):
they brag about their brooch made of narwhale ivory, punch
them in the face. You get them chuck. Uh. The
Inuits though too. They do actually eat um, the top
layer of skin and blubber. They're not um, they're not
the poachers that we're talking about. No. No, that that
stuff is called muck tuck or mock talk. And it's
(30:45):
extraordinarily essential for the um Native Inuits survival up there
because they don't get a lot of sunlight, not a
lot of limes growing around, and it's a excellent source
of vitamin C and um. They actually we are able
to survive up there by eating this stuff. So yeah,
there's there's a lot of good reason for them to hunt,
(31:07):
let alone just the cultural stuff. Um. But yeah, the
poaching is unjustifiable no matter who's doing it. Yeah, and
then you know there that's the human side of things.
There's also polar bears, walruses, orcas. They will all try
if they can catch those fast dudes and ladies swimming
under the water. They will definitely dine on them if
(31:27):
given the opportunity, right, which again that orca has that
dorsal ridge, not a fin, so they can conceivably get
away from orcas. Here's the thing. What happens when the
climate changes and the sea I starts to melt a
little bit all of a sudden, those orcas have been
waiting there like I've been waiting a thousand years for
this minute, and they go get you, and you're in
(31:48):
our wall and you're in trouble and it's actually a
big threat against our walls. Right now, they were um
voted the mammal you know, yeah, the marine mammal least
likely to survive melting ice flows. Wow, because they're just
so they're so dependent on them. Like, wherever the ice is,
that's where the nar walls are at any given point
(32:10):
in the year. That's where there their food is. That's
that's where they they procreate, That's that's where they live.
And if there's not ice flows, they're in trouble. Sad well,
it wouldn't be a stuff should episode if we didn't
end it on a bummer. That's right. Uh. If you
want to know more about nar walls, you can type
that word into the search bar at how stuff works
(32:32):
dot com. And since I said nar whale, it's time
for listener mayo. I'm gonna call this oh interesting follow
up from a long time ago. Hey guys, I'm from
a Doncaster, England, which who knows, maybe that's pronounced as
(32:54):
far as I know Denny's. He's from Denny's. Uh uh,
it's in the north of the country, he says. I
work for my local council as a repair and maintenance man,
do a lot of driving around, so your show really
breaks up my day. And the folklore episode you spoke
about swearing in the English, who's sticking two fingers up?
(33:14):
You know, like we shoot the bird and they stick
the two fingers up like an inverted peace sign or
backwards peace sign. And he says, I have the reason
for you right here. This salute dates back to the
English long bowman who fought the French during the Hundred
Years War uh, which is not a hundred years by
the way. The French hated the English archers, who used
(33:35):
the long bow with such devastating effect. Any English archers
who were caught by the French had their index and
middle finger chopped off from their right hand, a terrible
penalty for an archer. Yes, Daniel, it surely is. I
love that. It's the worst penalty for an archer. This
led to the practice of the English archers, especially in
(33:56):
siege uh siege situations, taunting the French enemy with their
continued presence by raising two fingers and the two fingered
salute meaning you haven't cut off my fingers. Pa ha
finger ears Mm. That interesting. Yeah, I love that one.
I hadn't heard that one before. That's what he says.
And he says, by the way, guys have a son.
(34:17):
I'm to have a son on the tenth of September. Oh. Nice,
he's got it all scheduled out, I guess. So if
you read it on the air, shout out to unborn
Reggie Joshua Halifax. Great middle name, by the way, actually
great name all around. And that's from Daniel Blue Halifax. Nice.
Thanks a lot, Daniel. That was a great letter. It
was not from Halifax, no, but his last name is Halifax,
(34:41):
so he probably could get a free house there. Right. Yeah,
that's a good that's how it works. That's a good
dumb joke. If you thank you. If you want to
get in touch with us, like Daniel did, ah, you
can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark. There's
also s y s K Pod asked Chuck's at movie
(35:01):
crush Pod on Twitter too. I'm on Instagram at joshuam
Clark as well. Uh, there's uh Facebook a plenty. Chuck's
at movie Crush Pod on Facebook. Right yeah, Snapchatt us
do whatever, So I'm not done. There's Facebook dot com
slash stuff you should know. There's Facebook dot com slash
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's a Facebook bananza. You can
(35:24):
also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. It is always showing this sitter
home on the web. Stuff you should have dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!