Posted on 09/16/2018 11:50:28 AM PDT by ETL
A band of beluga whales took in a lost narwhal and made it one of their own, researchers said after discovering the lone whale swimming and playing with its new friends.
The narwhal was discovered in the St. Lawrence River, more than 620 miles from its normal habitat, swimming with about dozen of St. Lawrence River belugas. Narwhals normally live in the Arctic near Canada, Greenland, Russia and Norway, CBC News reported.
GREMM said the narwhal was believed to be a juvenile, swimming with mostly male belugas.
"It behaves like it was one of the boys," Robert Michaud, the president and scientific director of GREMM said.
Researchers said the narwhal adopted beluga-like behavior such as blowing bubbles. Belugas and narwhals are both social animals but they don’t interact often when they’re in northern waters together, researchers said.
GREMM also believed the narwhal was the same whale spotted in 2016 and 2017 with a pack of belugas. Researchers believed there was a chance belugas and narwhals may interbreed in the decades to come to create a “narwhal-beluga hybrid.”
“If this young narwhal spends his life with belugas, we’ll have a lot of information to learn and share,” Michaud said. “I hope I’ll be there to see it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia.
It is one of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale. The narwhal males are distinguished by a long, straight, helical tusk, which is an elongated upper left canine. The narwhal was one of many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his publication Systema Naturae in 1758.
Like the beluga, narwhals are medium-sized whales. For both sexes, excluding the male’s tusk, the total body size can range from 3.95 to 5.5 m (13 to 18 ft); the males are slightly larger than the females.
The average weight of an adult narwhal is 800 to 1,600 kg (1,760 to 3,530 lb). At around 11 to 13 years old, the males become sexually mature; females become sexually mature at about 5 to 8 years old. Narwhals do not have a dorsal fin, and their neck vertebrae are jointed like those of most other mammals, not fused as in dolphins and most whales.
Found primarily in Canadian Arctic and Greenlandic and Russian waters, the narwhal is a uniquely specialized Arctic predator. In winter, it feeds on benthic prey, mostly flatfish, under dense pack ice. During the summer, narwhals eat mostly Arctic cod and Greenland halibut, with other fish such as polar cod making up the remainder of their diet.[3]
Each year, they migrate from bays into the ocean as summer comes. In the winter, the male narwhals occasionally dive up to 1,500 m (4,920 ft) in depth, with dives lasting up to 25 minutes. Narwhals, like most toothed whales, communicate with “clicks”, “whistles”, and “knocks”.
Narwhals can live up to 50 years. They are often killed by suffocation when the sea ice freezes over. Other causes of death, specifically among young whales, is starvation and predation by orcas.
As previous estimates of the world narwhal population were below 50,000, narwhals are categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Nearly Threatened. More recent estimates list higher populations (upwards of 170,000), thus lowering the status to Least Concern.[4] Narwhals have been harvested for hundreds of years by Inuit people in northern Canada and Greenland for meat and ivory, and a regulated subsistence hunt continues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal
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It is adapted to life in the Arctic, so has anatomical and physiological characteristics that differentiate it from other cetaceans. Amongst these are its all-white color and the absence of a dorsal fin. It possesses a distinctive protuberance at the front of its head which houses an echolocation organ called the melon, which in this species is large and deformable.
The beluga’s body size is between that of a dolphin’s and a true whale’s, with males growing up to 5.5 m (18 ft) long and weighing up to 1,600 kg (3,530 lb). This whale has a stocky body. A large percentage of its weight is blubber, as is true of many cetaceans. Its sense of hearing is highly developed and its echolocation allows it to move about and find blowholes under sheet ice.
Belugas are gregarious and form groups of up to 10 animals on average, although during the summer, they can gather in the hundreds or even thousands in estuaries and shallow coastal areas. They are slow swimmers, but can dive to 700 m (2,300 ft) below the surface.
They are opportunistic feeders and their diets vary according to their locations and the season. The majority of belugas live in the Arctic Ocean and the seas and coasts around North America, Russia and Greenland; their worldwide population is thought to number around 150,000.
They are migratory and the majority of groups spend the winter around the Arctic ice cap; when the sea ice melts in summer, they move to warmer river estuaries and coastal areas. Some populations are sedentary and do not migrate over great distances during the year.
The native peoples of North America and Russia have hunted belugas for many centuries. They were also hunted commercially during the 19th century and part of the 20th century. Whale hunting has been under international control since 1973.
Currently, only certain Inuit and Alaska Native groups are allowed to carry out subsistence hunting of belugas. Other threats include natural predators (polar bears and killer whales), contamination of rivers (as with PCBs which bioaccumulate up the food chain), and infectious diseases.
From a conservation perspective, the beluga was placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List in 2008 as being “near threatened”; the subpopulation from the Cook Inlet in Alaska, however, is considered critically endangered and is under the protection of the United States’ Endangered Species Act. Of seven Canadian beluga populations, the 2 inhabiting eastern Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay are listed as endangered.
Belugas are one of the most commonly kept cetaceans in captivity and are housed in aquariums, dolphinariums, and wildlife parks in North America, Europe, and Asia. They are popular with the public due to their colour and expression.
The belugas heard they taste like chicken, and are just fattening it up for thanksgiving
Narwhals are evil. He is just waiting to pop their heads to watch the belugas deflat. Learned that from his evil lord and master deflater ....Tom Brady!
Narwhal tusks used to be passed off as being from a Unicorn.
I was at a historic house in Richmond once that had a four-poster bed made at Tiffany’s workshop in the 1890’s where the posts were narwhal tusks.
"Thanks Beluga dudes for letting me hang with you guys these past few days. Oh it's been two months? Don't worry, I'm totally going get back with my old pod and get a job. I sent out like a bunch of resumes and stuff today..."
Lol!
WATCH IT !!!! You’re gonna put somebody’s eye out with that thing!!!
Thanks, but I can’t stand that a-hole. Don’t find him the least bit funny. Liked the Narwhal though! :)
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