Narwhals – Myths, legends and facts

August 19, 2020

Monodon Monoceros, which means “One-Toothed Unicorn”

If you are anything like me and find yourself intrigued with the unicorns of the sea, “The Narwhal” then you will want to read on to find out some more interesting facts.

Often dubbed the Unicorns of the Sea, narwhals are intriguing creatures with large tusks that protrude from the top of their heads. The spiralled tusk can grow as long as 10 feet. They weigh up to 1.5 tonnes and can grow up to 18feet long. It is estimated there are around 170,000 Narwhals worldwide, putting them in the near threatened category and they are found in the Arctic Sea and can live up to approximately 50 years. Their meals mostly consist of arctic cod and greenland halibut. Other fish such as polar cod, cuttlefish, shrimp and armhook squid make up the rest of their diet. 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".

The Narwhals Tusk once sold as a “unicorn horn” for exorbitant amounts of money is actually a tooth that has grown through the top of the skull. This is mainly a male feature although has been seen in some females. There are also some “double tuskers” where the males will have two tusks instead of the one, for reasons still unknown. The only teeth Narwhals have are their tusks, inside their mouths they have no teeth at all! The tusk has sensory nerve endings, it is soft on the outside, and gradually gets hard and dense on the inside and has the ability to sense changes in the salinity of the water.

So what is the tusk used for? 

All sorts of ideas have come forward for the purpose of a Narwhals tusk. It could be used as a temperature regulator, a breathing organ, it may be used to detect sound like an acoustic probe. It could also be used as a weapon in battles, or to fend off predators. Other ideas are a digging, ice breaking tool or a way to attract females.. the bigger and more impressive the tusk the more attractive they might be to the opposite sex?

Not a lot of study has been done on Narwhals due to their elusive and shy nature. Cartoons sometimes suggest that narwhals are fierce creatures, perhaps duelling with their tusks. However this is not what’s been observed in a recent study led by a team that included marine and developmental biologists, comparative zoologists, dentists, and orthopedic surgeons in 2014. It was perhaps the most detailed and high-tech analysis of the tusk ever attempted and concluded that the tusk is a highly sensitive organ. On encounters with the Narwhals they were described as beautiful and quite graceful. 

“Narwhals were also seen to be shy and skittish. Which is not particularly surprising, as humans have hunted them for centuries. Today, the inuit hunt them under carefully-managed quotas, a practice that " is important culturally and from a dietary perspective," says Westdal – a biologist specialising in Arctic Marine Mammals.

The hunting is not a threat to the species, but noise might be. As the arctic sea ice retreats due to global warming, ever more shipping is passing through the arctic, and that means it is getting noisier. That could be a problem for narwhals, being whales, they communicate using sound: specifically, buzzy clicks, squeaks like a creaking door and strange whistles. They also use sonar to navigate. It is possible that all the extra noise will force them out of important habitats. Alternatively, they might shrug it off. "We don't know the answers to this at all," says Westdal. Preferring not to wait, conservationists are already trying to protect critical areas like Lancaster Sound, which most of the world's narwhals pass through every year.

lesley evans ogden bbc.com/earth/story


Here are some truths about Narwhals :
  • The common name narwhal literally means “corpse whale,” in reference to its pale body colour, which shades from a light grey on the lower flanks and underside to a dark and dappled grey on its back.
  • The narwhal is most closely related to the Beluga Whale. Together, these two species comprise the only extant members of the family Monodontidae, sometimes referred to as the "white whales".
  • Even though the Narwhal is closely related to the Beluga there is some evidence that they may, very rarely, interbreed to create a narwhal-beluga hybrid.
  • At times, a bull narwhal may rub its tusk with another bull, a display known as "tusking” to maintain social dominance hierarchies.
  • Narwhals belong to the group of animals known as toothed whales (even though they don’t have any teeth in their mouth! Only their tusk).
  • Narwhals can dive up to 1500m and stay under water for at least 25mins per dive. They may dive up to 15 times a day at a depth of at least 800m.
  • Narwhals are affected and threatened by climate change.
  • Narwhals are affected by noise pollution which is highly disturbing to their communications.
  • Narwhals can be lethally entrapped by rapidly forming fast ice. About 1000 narwhals died in an ice entrapment in Canada in 2008 and about 100 in two entrapments in Northwest Greenland in 2009–10.
  • Narwhals can be threatened by seismic testing and more studies are urgently needed.
  • Inuit-indigenous people of the Arctic have long hunted Narwhals for food and for the ivory of their tusks.
  • Other causes of death, specifically among young whales, are starvation and predation by Orcas and Polar Bears.

Narwhal Legends 



Narwhals have intrigued many explorers, sailors and scientists for many hundreds of years. They are mysterious elusive animals and have been the beginnings of legends about mythical unicorns of the arctic seas. A lot of people still don’t realise that Narwhals are a real living animal. This is due to the fact they are often spoken of as a mythical creature and so much is still unknown about them. Folklore surrounding the narwhal is rooted in cultural and natural history. For instance, among the Inuit in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the narwhal was once a woman with long hair that she had twisted and plaited to resemble a tusk. The woman is the blind boy’s stepmother. Though the woman herself has “plenty of meat, she kept the blind boy starving.” However, his kind sister “would sometimes hide a piece of meat under her sleeve, and give it to her brother when her mother was absent.”



The transformation of the woman to narwhal begins when a pod of white whales swims nearby. The mother intends to harvest the whales, but the son (who by this time has regained his sight) pretended to help his mother hold the line, but gradually he pushed her on to the edge of the floe, and the whale pulled her under water….. when the whale came up again, she lay on her back, she took her hair in her hands and twisted it into the form of a horn, she cried, ‘o stepson! why do you throw me into the water? Don’t you remember that I cleaned you when you were a child?’ She was transformed into a narwhal. Then the white whale and the narwhal swam away.



The Inuit people have always hunted the narwhal sustainably using every part of the animal. Its meat, skin, blubber and ivory tusk for a variety of purposes. The myth of the narwhal explains why it is different from other whales in the arctic, and why the narwhal is so special to the Inuit people, as a former human being living in the arctic.



Some medieval Europeans believed narwhal tusks to be the horns from the legendary unicorn.[65][66] As these horns were considered to have magic powers, such as neutralising poison and curing melancholia, Vikings and other northern traders were able to sell them for many times their weight in gold.[67] The tusks were used to make cups that were thought to negate any poison that may have been slipped into the drink. A narwhal tusk exhibited at Warwick Castle is according to legend the rib of the mythical Dun Cow.[68] In 1555, Olaus Magnus published a drawing of a fish-like creature with a horn on its forehead, correctly identifying it as a "Narwal".[65] 



During the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I received a carved and bejewelled narwhal tusk worth 10,000 pounds sterling—the 16th-century equivalent cost of a castle (approximately £1.5–2.5 million in 2007, using the retail price index[67])– Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who proposed the tusk was from a "sea-unicorn". The tusks were staples of the cabinet of curiosities.[65] European knowledge of the tusk's origin developed gradually during the Age of Exploration, as explorers and naturalists began to visit Arctic regions themselves.



The narwhal was one of two possible explanations of the giant sea phenomenon written by Jules Verne in his 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Verne thought that it would be unlikely that there was such a gigantic narwhal in existence. The size of the narwhal, or "unicorn of the sea", as found by Verne, would have been 18.3 m (60 ft). For the narwhal to have caused the phenomenon, Verne stated that its size and strength would have to increase by five or ten times.[



~Wikipedia 





It is our hope that the numbers of these near threatened sea creatures will grow more in numbers and we can continue to learn more about the unicorn of the sea.