Where does the narwhal whale get its name from?”
The narwhals are usually in pods of about 10 up to 100 whales that swim solely in the Arctic waters. The name Narwhal means “corpse whale” because it often swims belly up, laying motionless for several minutes. Narwhals usually take their time going places, slowly breathing and rolling, but when chased, they are remarkably quick. Sometimes they travel in small family groups, in these groups they communicate by means of a great variety of squeals, trills, whistles, and clicks. If you were in the middle of a pod you would find out that the sound is deafening. The male narwhal sometimes duel in the summer feeding ground, crossing tusks in a friendly manner. Nobody knows why narwhals dual, it might be to “scratch an itch”, (the base of the tusk is usually infected with lice) or this tusk crossing might be a greeting, no one knows for sure. Contrasted with the huge tusk are two round little eyes and a small, turned up mouth located just below the large tusk. Instead of a dorsal fin. The nar
The narwhal was one of the many species originally described by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae. This is based on the Old Norse word nár, meaning “corpse”, in reference to the animal’s greyish, mottled pigmentation, like that of a drowned sailor. The scientific name, Monodon monoceros, is derived from Greek: “one-tooth one-horn”. The narwhal (Monodon monoceros) is a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. One of two species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the Beluga whale, the narwhal males are distinguished by a characteristic long, straight, helical tusk extending from their upper left jaw. Found primarily in Canadian Arctic and Greenlandic waters rarely south of 65°N latitude, the narwhal is a uniquely specialized Arctic predator. In the winter, it feeds on benthic prey, mostly flatfish, at depths of up to 1500 m under dense pack ice. Narwhal have been harvested for thousands of years by Inuit people in Northern Canada and Greenland for meat a
The name “narwhal” comes from the Old Norse word for “corpse” whale, because the animals’ mottled coloration supposedly looked like the skin of a drowned sailor. Narwhals are an Arctic whale known as the unicorn of the sea. The males have a distinctive long, spiral tusk. For centuries, traders sold these tusks as the legendary unicorn horn, which people thought had magic powers.
