The amazing narwhal

You really should read this article about the narwhal and his sublime spiral tooth. A dentist who got interested in narwhals is reporting his findings this week at the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego. It turns out that the teeth are sensory organs that probably tell this whale a lot about his environmental conditions. And no, they don't fight with them, but they do sometimes rub them together, perhaps to clean them. Maybe they will find that related or friendly males do this in greeting (not much is known about the behavior, which is mostly observed by Inuit people - yet another example of the value and scope of Native knowledge).

And it is sort of fitting that I post about teeth today, since tomorrow I'm having surgery to get my top wisdom teeth removed.