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| Male Narwhals (Public Domain) |
When Daniel Botelho was on a mission for Disney, he saw something so fantastic that it could have come straight out of a Disney movie.
That something was a narwhal. Wikipedia explains that this mythical-looking creature is actually "a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic." The name "narwhal" is from the Old Norse word nar, meaning
"corpse." This refers not only to the narwhal's "greyish, mottled" coloring (like that of a drowned human), but also to "its summertime habit of laying inactive at or near the surface of the sea…"
However, it is this creature's scientific name – Monodon monoceros –
that hones in on the narwal's "mythical" aspects. This Greek terminology means "one-tooth one-horn." From there it's an easy jump over to "one-toothed unicorn."
According to Pete Thomas of The Big Blue, what appears to be this "unicorn's" tusk is actually "a single tooth that sprouts through a narwal's upper lip."
Imagine a canine tooth that just keeps growing and growing until it's nine feet long. Now
you've got a pretty good idea of what the male narwal's ivory "tusk" actually is.
Sounds magical? Some
medieval Europeans believed so. They
thought that narwal tusks could "cure poison and melancholia." There is also an Inuit legend which states that a harpooning woman was transformed into a narwal, and her long twisted hair became its spiral tusk.
Resources
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/divers-rare-encounter-with-unicorn-of-the-sea/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal
Copyright July 13, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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