narwhal

Another explorer, Martin Nweeia, a dental surgeon, discovered that a narwhal’s tusk, whose purpose was a mystery to scientists, is actually a sensory rod that helps it measure salinity, temperature and water pressure.

There’s the narwhal, which mates “in a kind of ballet; a pair will swim alongside each other for hours, skins touching.”

In seven years on The Times’s National Desk, I wrote about everything from natural disasters to narwhals.

Menopause is known to exist in five species of toothed whale: short-finned pilot whales, false killer whales, killer whales, narwhals and beluga whales.

They found females of five "menopausal" species - narwhals and beluga, short-finned pilot, false killer and killer whales - lived about four decades longer than other toothed whales.