Videos Show Narwhals Using Their Tusks to Play With Their Food

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.

“It’s almost mesmerizing,” said Greg O’Corry-Crowe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University who studies marine mammals. “The precision with which they wielded their tusks, it wasn’t like a broadsword. It was like a surgical instrument or the bow of a violin.”

In research published last month in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, Dr. O’Corry-Crowe and colleagues make the case that narwhals aren’t only showing off with their tusks — the appendages have a variety of demonstrated uses that help the animals survive in the ocean.

The narwhal’s tusk was an inspiration for unicorn myths. It’s 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.

“They’re extremely shy and elusive whales,” said Kristin Laidre, an applied animal ecology professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. “They’re really hard to approach. They’re really skittish.” 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 — combined with the 24-hour daylight in August — allowed the researchers to film some of the best footage of narwhals ever captured.