The Truth About Walrus Tusks (And Why Everyone Is Wrong)
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The walrus did not grow those tusks for orcas. It did not grow them for polar bears either — and it did not grow them to dig for food.
In September 1990, on the gravel at Cape Blossom on Wrangel Island, the Russian biologist Nikita Ovsyanikov watched polar bears hunt walruses from the ground, close enough to record every detail. Across three autumns he logged 25 hunting interactions. Eleven of them were attacks on adult walruses. All eleven failed. Three bears walked away bleeding, and five more on that beach already carried old stab wounds.
One year later, a single aircraft passed over a haulout further along the same coast. No bear touched them. No orca was in the water. One hundred and four walruses died in a single afternoon.
Eleven predators could not kill one adult walrus. Something killed a hundred and four in an afternoon — and it was not a predator.
This documentary follows the evidence through the animal itself: the tusk wear that shows dragging instead of digging, the suction-feeding system that pulls harder than a household vacuum and leaves the shell unbroken, the 2022 study of 40 walrus lower jaws that told male from female by jaw shape alone with 100% accuracy, the ten centimetres of hide on a bull's neck and shoulders, and the wound map Ovsyanikov kept of exactly where a walrus tusk lands.
What those tusks were actually built for is not what almost everyone assumes — and the polar bear turns out to be a bystander who walked into an argument that was never about him.
SOURCES
Ovsyanikov, N.G. (1995) "Polar Bear Predation of Walruses on Wrangell Island." Bulletin of the Moscow Association of Natural Scientists, Section of Biology, Vol. 100, Issue 4.
Boisville, M., Chatar, N., Lambert, O. & Dewaele, L. (2022) "Sexual dimorphism in the walrus mandible: comparative description and geometric morphometrics." PeerJ 10:e13940.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Two tonnes, and a metre of ivory that makes no sense
1:06 September 1990, Cape Blossom, Wrangel Island
3:25 One aircraft, 104 dead, and no predator
5:22 The digging myth, and the wear that rules it out
6:43 Whiskers, water jets and a vacuum that leaves the shell intact
9:17 Forty jaws, and the 100% result
11:25 Ten centimetres of hide in one place only
12:43 Where the tusk actually lands
14:18 The display that stopped every bear
16:02 The real ledger
20:00 What this means for orcas in open water
#arctic #oceandocumentary
The Truth About Walrus Tusks (And Why Everyone Is Wrong)
APEX BELOW
292 views
The walrus did not grow those tusks for orcas. It did not grow them for polar bears either — and it did not grow them to dig for food.
In September 1990, on the gravel at Cape Blossom on Wrangel Island, the Russian biologist Nikita Ovsyanikov watched polar bears hunt walruses from the ground, close enough to record every detail. Across three autumns he logged 25 hunting interactions. Eleven of them were attacks on adult walruses. All eleven failed. Three bears walked away bleeding, and five more on that beach already carried old stab wounds.
One year later, a single aircraft passed over a haulout further along the same coast. No bear touched them. No orca was in the water. One hundred and four walruses died in a single afternoon.
Eleven predators could not kill one adult walrus. Something killed a hundred and four in an afternoon — and it was not a predator.
This documentary follows the evidence through the animal itself: the tusk wear that shows dragging instead of digging, the suction-feeding system that pulls harder than a household vacuum and leaves the shell unbroken, the 2022 study of 40 walrus lower jaws that told male from female by jaw shape alone with 100% accuracy, the ten centimetres of hide on a bull's neck and shoulders, and the wound map Ovsyanikov kept of exactly where a walrus tusk lands.
What those tusks were actually built for is not what almost everyone assumes — and the polar bear turns out to be a bystander who walked into an argument that was never about him.
SOURCES
Ovsyanikov, N.G. (1995) "Polar Bear Predation of Walruses on Wrangell Island." Bulletin of the Moscow Association of Natural Scientists, Section of Biology, Vol. 100, Issue 4.
Boisville, M., Chatar, N., Lambert, O. & Dewaele, L. (2022) "Sexual dimorphism in the walrus mandible: comparative description and geometric morphometrics." PeerJ 10:e13940.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Two tonnes, and a metre of ivory that makes no sense
1:06 September 1990, Cape Blossom, Wrangel Island
3:25 One aircraft, 104 dead, and no predator
5:22 The digging myth, and the wear that rules it out
6:43 Whiskers, water jets and a vacuum that leaves the shell intact
9:17 Forty jaws, and the 100% result
11:25 Ten centimetres of hide in one place only
12:43 Where the tusk actually lands
14:18 The display that stopped every bear
16:02 The real ledger
20:00 What this means for orcas in open water
#arctic #oceandocumentary