Ever wondered why you've never seen a narwhal in an aquarium?
Nah, me neither.
But it turns out there's an extremely dark reason why the unusual species of Atlantic Arctic toothed whales are no longer spotted inside a tank.
Resembling some sort of a seal with a unicorn horn, narwhals use their tusks to 'sense the environment around them'.
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"They can feel their surroundings similar to how a human's broken tooth would have feeling," senior specialist of Arctic species and ecosystems with WWF -Canada, Brandon Laforest, told National Geographic.
Their bodies alone measure between 3.95 to 5.5 meters (13 to 18 feet), but that's not the reason why they don't like aquariums.
According to IFL Science, they are extremely shy and skittish, which has made their behaviour very difficult to study.
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When the New York Aquarium in Coney Island is thought to have held a narwhal in 1969, the young calf named Umiak died of pneumonia in less than a year.
Vancouver Aquarium in Canada also held two female narwhals and three calves in 1970.
Less than a month later, the three calves died.
A couple months after that, the two females also passed away
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While we don't know the exact reason why narwhals find it so difficult to live in tanks, what we do know is that their unicorn horn (tusk) is filled with 10 million nerve endings.
Paired with already being extremely sensitive creatures, their tusk is capable of detecting subtle changes in temperature, pressure and particle gradients.
When moved away from their surroundings, they have little chance of survival.
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This comes after aquarium visitors have long been issued camera flash warnings amid the unsettling video of a fish 'killing itself' after being startled by camera flash, which has resurfaced on social media.
The 2013 video went viral for the wrong reasons as it showed the shocking death of the large fish at an aquarium In Japan.
As a crowd of people surrounded the large fish tank many visitors decided to take photos with the flash on.
However, one tuna fish seems to react badly to the constant flashing and is filmed ramming itself into the glass.
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The agitated sea creature sadly managed to knock itself out and reportedly died as a result.
Aquarium tanks are usually made out of a highly reflective acrylic material and can negatively affect the vision of the fish on the other side of the glass.
Most aquariums discourage people from using camera flashes and the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California has warned visitors for doing so.
"Please turn off your flash when taking photographs inside the Aquarium," it said on its website.
"You’ll get better photos without your flash — and our animals and other visitors will thank you."
London's Sea Life aquarium also said on an FAQ about if you can take photos: "Yes you can, as we want you to take your memories of our creatures home with you.
"However we do not permit the use of any flash photography as this can scare and harm our creatures."
Topics: Animals, Environment, Science
Anish Vij