well-endowed male actually had to 
fight every potential challenger, he 
would have little time or energy left for 
feeding or mating. The narwhal tusk 
may have a signaling function. If that 
is the case, then it is interesting to 
question whether the cues involved are 
visual, acoustic, tactile, or some combi- 
nation of these. In any event, it seems 
likely that narwhal society is organized 
in such a way that prime bulls fight 
each other only after other means of 
demonstrating dominance have proved 
inconclusive. 
The entire issue of tusk function may 
never be fully resolved. Although the 
tusk probably evolved for one or two 
primary functions, it could have been 
preadapted for a variety of other uses. 
For instance, does the tusk enhance lo- 
comotion in a manner similar to that 
of the rostrum of billfish? Could the 
warming of its boundary layer by the 
rapid conduction of heat from the 
tusk’s pulp chamber into the environ- 
ment reduce drag and improve the 
swimming efficiency of large males 
during critical episodes of physical ex- 
ertion? Or might the polished tip of the 
tusk act as a lure, attracting photo- 
tropic prey? 
Our own research has been con- 
cerned not so much with how the nar- 
whal uses its tusk but with how people 
use it and, in the process, abuse its 
bearer. We have tried, in particular, to 
reconstruct the economic history of 
narwhal exploitation and determine 
what kind of impact commercial hunt- 
ing has had on the stocks. Our quest has 
met with only partial success because 
ivory merchants have never been eager 
to divulge the details of their trade. 
Narwhals are most abundant in the 
Greenland Sea and in the Baffin 
Bay-Davis Strait area 
Joe LeMonnier 
Also, we still have only a vague idea of 
how many narwhals there are, how 
many there once were, and what natu- 
ral factors control their abundance and 
distribution. 
The particular date of the European 
discovery of the narwhal — or perhaps 
one should say the recognition of the 
creature for what it was — is difficult 
to pin down. Acknowledgment of the 
narwhal’s existence, after all, would 
shatter the cherished myths and super- 
stitions built around belief in the uni- 
corn, to say nothing of what it would do 
to the profits of merchants trading on 
the alleged medicinal and restorative 
properties of unicorn horns. Suppliers 
of narwhal tusks were less than eager to 
see for themselves where the tusks actu- 
ally came from, and when they could 
no longer hide the truth from them- 
selves, they did what they could to hide 
it from prospective buyers. One story 
about the attempted sale of a tusk to a 
Russian prince, related by a seven- 
teenth-century Danish savant, testifies 
to the merchants’ lack of scruples: 
The Great Duke being extremely taken with 
the beauty thereof, he showed it to his phy- 
sician, who understanding the matter, told 
him ’twas nothing but the tooth of a fish; so 
that this agent returned to Copenhagen 
without selling his commodity. After his re- 
turn ... he exclaimed against the physician 
Fred Bruemmer 
52 
