On the existence of Unicorns

I humbly submit that unicorns exist. My reasoning: if, in fact, unicorns existed in some distant past and were all swept out to sea, they would have either (1) all died off, in which case they would no longer exist, or (2) they learned to adapt to living in water. There is a third option – that they survived long enough to come back to the shore later – but that would involve me knowing something about amphibians so I’ll table that for now. Stipulating that number two is in play, what would a unicorn look like now?

The unicorn’s primary feature – the spike on its head – would have to be there or what’s the point? In addition, unicorns are medium sized mammals, so in adapting to the sea they would have to be medium sized whales, dolphins, or porpoises. As you probably know – I assume that you are way ahead of me on this – there is a porpoise/whale sea creature with a spike coming out of its head – the narwhal. The spike is actually an elongated tooth, but is that a deal breaker? I don’t think so; perhaps the tales of the unicorn’s spike were a bit romanticized, and that spike was part of the unicorn’s teeth all along.

I presented this argument to my daughter when she was twelve, and she got really mad at me. Oh well, nobody appreciates the messenger.