Narwhal's tusk mystery explained.

[Vie]

"...scientists from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has now made a startling discovery: the [narwhal's] tusk, it turns out, forms a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity, making the living appendage one of the planet's most remarkable..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/13narw.html?hp

 

[archman]

That's certainly odd. I anticipate a surge in analyzing animal teeth with electron microscopes.

There will also be permits secured for physiological tests on live narwhales. Finally we get some justifiable research whaling... This is pretty neat stuff. There may be some taxonomic reevaluation in store for this species.

This is the most exciting thing I've heard in nature since they discovered two kinds of venom in scorpions a few years back. Yippee.

 

[DavidPT40]

Even more exciting than when Nature said there might be microbial life on Mars?

 

[archman]

Even more exciting than when Nature said there might be microbial life on Mars?

Which time?

That's more like a running gag now.

 

[Doc Intrepid]

This actually IS pretty cool. Like discovering black smokers on the ocean's floor, which offered a glimpse of non-carbon-based life forms among other things, this merely re-emphasizes the extent to which we know very little about many things in the ocean.