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Scientists have revealed that a rare narwhal in the eastern St. Lawrence River had apparently been adopted by a beluga band.
In 2016, the young narwhal was discovered in the river with a hundred adult beluga whales. But it has recently started traveling with a dozen belugas, all considered young men or young adults.
Narwhals have only one pointed defense that grows with their heads. Their defenses can be seen in video footage of whale drones taken by the Canadian non-profit research and education group on marine mammals.
Narwhals "seem to be at home with St. Lawrence belugas," a GREMM statement said.
The group members are in "constant contact with each other," GREMM President Robert Michaud told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The narwhal "behaves like one of the boys" and seems to have been completely accepted by belugas, Michaud said. "It's like a big social balloon of kids playing social games," he says.
The narwhal even begins to capture the behavior of the beluga, for example by making bubbles.
Narwhals and belugas, the only species of the family Monodontidae, are closely related and about the same size. But narwhals are Arctic creatures and are generally visible more than 600 miles north of this area. And narwhals hunt deep-water fish generally in ice-covered areas. Belugas prefer shallower, warmer coastal waters and tend to look for fish such as salmon closer to the surface.
GREMM scientists have speculated that this marriage between narwhal and beluga could be related to climate change.
"Due to climate change in the Arctic, it is possible that these two related species will be found more and more frequently in the coming decades," noted the GREMM on its website. "We already see this phenomenon in other species such as polar bears and grizzly bears, which have even been observed at crossbreeding. Could we ever see a hybrid of narwhals and belugas in the St. Lawrence?
"I do not think it should surprise people," Martin Nweeia, a researcher at Harvard University who studies both narwhals and belugas, told CBC. "I think it shows … the compassion and openness of other species to welcome another member who might not look like or act the same way."
In the middle Ages, Narwhal's defenses have been cherished as unicorn horns. A medieval narwhal defense eight feet long then identified as a unicorn horn on display with the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloister of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Last year, videos of narwhals revealed for the first time that animals used their tusks to hunt for food using cod or dizzying them:
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