Hey, I'm Flor Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today on the show, let's say you're a sea mammal, born with a 10-foot tusk sticking out of the front of your head.

What would you use it for?

They actually use their tusks as not just a display or a weapon.

They use it as a kind of surgical instrument to catch prey.

This year has seen a rise in the use of the term unicorn to describe everything from basketball stars to AI startups.

So we thought we'd dive back into one of our favorite conversations of 2025

about the science of real-life unicorns.

I am talking, of course, about narwhals.

These are the mysterious Arctic whales with those long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads. They look like a creature

out of a fairy tale, and it turns out we don't know too much about them. They're hard to study,

partly because they live so far north in the remote Arctic. So an international team of researchers

had this idea. They turned to drones to observe them, and they learned all these new things about

this storied creature. On the horn to tell us more is Dr. Greg O'Coree Crow, a research professor

at Florida Atlantic University based in Boca Raton, Florida. Greg, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you for having me. Okay. Are Narwhals mysterious? Yes, I think so. I think they fire

the human imagination, as you say, with their incredible tusks that are truly amazing natural

features. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, they live in quite remote challenging locations and are

known to few. But fortunately for us, we've partnered with indigenous communities in the far north

to set out and learn more about this incredible animal. What did you learn about them?

So a big challenge up to now has been actually just getting

to observe them in the wild. We've been fortunate to work from boats sometimes and from the sea ice,

...