In 1577, an English navigator, who offered the horn of a mysterious creature at sea to Queen Elizabeth, received a reward of 10,000 pounds, which was already enough to buy a castle at that time.
This marine mysterious creature is the legendary "unicorn", which is named narwhal because it has a long horn on its head, but its unicorn is not a horn, but a tooth.
Narwhals are mainly distributed on the back of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as in the Arctic Ocean region, with a body length of 4-5 meters and a weight of 900-1600 kg, similar in appearance to ordinary small whales.
Female narwhals do not have "unicorns", while males, on the left side of their palates, grow a strange tusk and burst out of their lips, growing like a long rod out of their mouths.
The tusks are about 2-3 meters long, and there are some spiral lines on the tusks, which look like electrical bricks. And this tusk has a hardness of up to 2.75 and a density of up to 1.95 g/cm³, making it one of the hardest teeth in animals in the world. It also has excellent toughness and can be bent 30 cm in any direction.
It is worth mentioning that a very small proportion of male narwhals have two tusks, and the value of these two connected tusks far exceeds that of the ordinary two tusks. For example, in Australian historical records, It has been recorded that Caesar Kaile V offset a large amount of national debt with two connected narwhal tusks.
Although narwhals' tusks appear aggressive, they don't use their tusks to kill prey.
According to scientific research, the tusks of narwhals are mainly used to sense the temperature, pressure, and salinity of seawater, while transmitting information to their companions, such as when encountering danger or communicating, they will use their tusks to collide with each other.
In addition, during courtship, the narwhal will show its tusks to the female, and the longer and thicker the tusks, the more attractive they are to the females, and its status in the population is higher.
However, humans began hunting narwhals long ago, and the Inuit at that time would kill narwhals because of food shortages, but they did not hunt them in a big way.
Until the middle of the 15th century, after the narwhal's tusks were learned by Europeans, they thought that the narwhal's tusks could bring them good luck, so they made the narwhal's tusks into various scepters and set various diamonds on them. They even believe that the tusks of narwhals can test poisonous liquor, which will turn black whenever placed in it.
European nobles began to buy narwhal tusks, and the Inuit also slaughtered narwhals, who would stay on the narwhal migration route and hunt narwhals with spears, shotguns and other weapons.
After hunting narwhals, the flesh of the whales will be eaten by them, the skins will be made into various clothing, and the tusks of the narwhals will be sold to Europeans by them. A tusk is worth $1,000, a tooth in Europe is at least $5,000, and if it's a particularly long and straight tusk, it can even sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Driven by such interests, more and more people are joining the narwhal hunting industry, which has also led to the endangerment of narwhals. The Animal Society protested that although the annual killing limit was 500, the self-interested poachers would secretly kill thousands of narwhals every year. #I'm going to make micro headlines##Open your eyes##Animal##独角鲸 #
