NARWHAL MUTHS ARE WEIRD

Narwhal tusks are always off center. They're never going in the middle. The reason is that tusk is actually a canine tooth. So every narwhal with two tusks can actually see them both right here in their sockets. However, only one ends up erupting and that's typically in males and it's usually going to be the left tusk. But if you know anything about my channel, I talk about evolution and evolution relies on the fact that sometimes accidents and occasionally narwhals, they actually have two tusks because both canine teeth erupt. These teeth, they go through the they aren't forming like a normal tooth would form. They're going outward. That's what you're seeing right there. The inside of a narwhal mouth. For an animal with such a big tooth, they don't actually chew, they slurp. Recent drone footage has suggested that the narwhals will use that large tooth to stun though before they slurp them up and swallow them whole. Notice this mouth, you don't see any other teeth in there. But if we go back to this diagram, female and the although the male, really tiny one up there, these do have little vestigial teeth. Vestigial means they are essentially leftover. They could be lost and no one would really care. And that's what the researchers think is actually happening with narwhals today. Sometimes lineages do when the asteroid hit around 66 million years ago, lots of non-bird dinosaur lineages suddenly went extinct. But lots of animals that we consider extinct, they evolved in most fossils are actually transitional fossils connecting past populations to more recent populations. And this is an example of see this today too. They mention that the randomness behind the patterns and the randomness behind the morphology, it suggests that the way out. They aren't being shaped by natural selection. They're being guided by random germ cell differentiation and may eventually cease expression entirely. Narwhal ancestors had lots of little teeth. In the future, their descendants will probably have zero of those other. Today there are some. While we're on the subject, let's get even weirder. Narwhals and belugas, DNA evidence suggest they last shared a common ancestor around 5.5 million years ago. Just over 5 million years apart, but very different. This is the beluga mouth up here. Notice the teeth. They are using to eat. This skull, that is the narluga. A narluga is a beluga whale and a narwhal, they have babies and hybridize. And their teeth, their teeth are unlike either parent group. And actually isotope evidence from their teeth suggest they feed entirely different than either parent species. If you found this interesting and want to learn more about and just random stuff that I find interesting, follow. I try as much of I can.