40 Fun Facts About Narwhals

The word narwhal comes from an Old Norse name, possibly inspired by its mottled grey skin, meaning what?

Corpse whale is the meaning of the Old Norse nárhval. The name may also reflect the narwhal's habit of floating motionless at the surface on summer days.

What was the fate of narwhals brought into captivity during repeated attempts in the 1960s and 1970s?

They died within months each time, so the attempts stopped. In the wild, by contrast, narwhals live for around 50 years on average.

The long spiralled tusk of a male narwhal is an overgrown version of which type of tooth?

A canine forms the tusk, erupting through the lip when the whale is two or three years old and growing for life. Elephant tusks, by contrast, are incisors.

Which trait, rare in the animal kingdom, do female narwhals share with women and a few other toothed whales?

Menopause lets female narwhals live for decades after their last calf. Females in this phase may go on protecting the calves of the pod.

In Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, which vessel is first taken for a gigantic narwhal?

The Nautilus, Captain Nemo's electric submarine, is hunted as a sea monster by a US Navy frigate. The narrator learns the truth only after being thrown overboard onto its hull.

Drone footage from the Canadian Arctic in 2016 revealed narwhals using their tusks to do what while hunting?

Narwhals were filmed using the tusk to tap and stun fish, leaving small Arctic cod easier to catch. Females usually lack a tusk yet outlive males, so it is no survival essential.

Which whale, the only other living member of the family Monodontidae, is the narwhal's closest relative?

The beluga and the narwhal split about five million years ago yet can still interbreed. A hybrid skull from West Greenland, nicknamed a narluga, was confirmed by DNA in 2019.

Which Christmas comedy has its director, Jon Favreau, as the uncredited voice of a character called Mr. Narwhal?

Elf has Favreau voicing three creatures without credit: Mr. Narwhal, Baby Walrus and the Arctic Puffin. The 2003 film stars Will Ferrell as Buddy, a human raised by Santa's helpers.

Which Arctic land predator has been recorded waiting beside breathing holes in the ice to catch young narwhals?

The polar bear ambushes narwhals where they must surface to breathe. Whales crowded around a shrinking hole in the ice have nowhere else to go.

Which kingdom's coronation chair, guarded by silver lions, is made of narwhal tusk once claimed as unicorn horn?

Denmark crowned its absolute monarchs in the chair from 1671 to 1840. Modelled on the biblical throne of Solomon, it now stands in Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen.

Which marine predator has been observed surrounding and wiping out entire pods of narwhals in Arctic waters?

The killer whale, or orca, hunts narwhals in open water. Rather than try to outswim it, narwhals may slip beneath ice floes and stay submerged for as long as they can.

Which feature of most whales is replaced in the narwhal by a low ridge, probably to ease swimming under ice?

The dorsal fin is missing in narwhals, and a shallow ridge runs along the back instead. The smooth back may also make it easier for the whale to roll.

Narwhal skin is valued in the traditional Inuit diet, where fresh plants are scarce, as a source of which nutrient?

Vitamin C is plentiful in the raw skin, which is otherwise hard to come by in the far north. British explorers of the region ate whale skin to keep scurvy away.

Like most toothed whales, narwhals find prey in dark water under the ice using which technique?

Echolocation clicks bounce back from prey and from barriers at short range. Narwhals make the sounds by moving air between chambers near the blowhole.

About a third of a narwhal's body mass is made up of which tissue, up to 10 centimetres thick?

Blubber insulates the narwhal against icy seas. Calves are born with only a thin layer and build it up on their mothers' fat-rich milk.

In 2025 the United Kingdom extended a law to narwhals that bans most trade in which animal material?

Ivory from narwhal tusks and teeth now falls under the UK's Ivory Act, with exceptions for artistic and cultural artefacts. Hunters in Canada and Greenland still sell tusks carved and uncarved.

Medieval rulers prized cups and powder made from narwhal tusk, sold as unicorn horn, as protection against what?

Poison was a constant fear at royal courts, and the supposed horn was also taken for measles and rubella. Demand faded once science refuted the unicorn in the 17th century.

In Qaanaaq in Greenland, hunters still harpoon narwhals the traditional way from which handmade craft?

Kayaks built by hand are still used in Qaanaaq. Elsewhere in Greenland and in northern Canada, narwhal hunters work from high-speed boats with rifles.

A narwhal tusk from the wall of Fishmongers' Hall was used to fight a knife attacker on which Thames crossing?

London Bridge was where bystanders cornered the attacker in 2019. One of them, Darryn Frost, had grabbed the 1.5-metre tusk from the hall wall to use as a weapon.

Which naturalist gave the narwhal its scientific name, Monodon monoceros, in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus gave the narwhal a scientific name drawn from Ancient Greek for single-tooth and single-horn. It is still the only species in its genus.

What is the Inuit name for the delicacy of raw whale skin with a layer of fat, often cut from narwhals?

Muktuk is most often cut from bowhead whales, though narwhal is used too. It is usually eaten raw but can also be served frozen, cooked or pickled.

A male narwhal's tusk pushes out through the lip from which part of the jaw?

Upper left is the rule, because the tusk is one of a pair of teeth embedded in the top jaw. In rare males the right one emerges too, giving them two tusks.

The narwhal's tusk can sense changes in water temperature because it contains millions of what?

Nerve endings run through the tusk, making it a sensory organ as well as a badge of status. It may also detect shifts in water pressure and in the particles the water carries.

With almost no working teeth for gripping prey, how are narwhals believed to catch fish and squid?

Sucking them in is the narwhal's method: it swims up close and draws the prey into its mouth. Arctic cod and halibut were the commonest finds in one study of narwhal stomachs.

Which feature of a narwhal's neck, unusual among whales, gives it a far greater range of head movement?

Unfused vertebrae give the narwhal a flexible neck, where most whales have theirs locked together. Its closest living relative shares the trait.

What name is given to the mass of fat in a narwhal's forehead that focuses the sounds it makes?

The melon can be reshaped by the muscles around it, steering sound that has bounced off the sloping front of the skull. Narwhals and their relatives have unusually prominent ones.

In its 2017 assessment, the IUCN Red List placed the narwhal, with about 170,000 animals, in which category?

Least concern is the lowest-risk category on the list. Even so, narwhals are counted among the Arctic marine mammals most exposed to climate change as sea ice declines.

Which body of water between Canada and Greenland holds around 140,000 narwhals, most of the world's total?

Baffin Bay narwhals spend the summer near northern Canada and Greenland, then travel about 1,700 km south to pass the winter in the Davis Strait.

Which English monarch was given a narwhal tusk, taken for a unicorn's horn and said to be worth £10,000?

Elizabeth I's gift shows how such tusks ranked as state presents for the kings and queens of Europe, who prized them as the horns of unicorns.

Narwhal skin changes with age until very old animals are almost entirely which colour?

White patches keep spreading throughout a narwhal's life. Calves are born light grey, and adults in their prime carry blackish-brown mottling.

In one Inuit legend, the narwhal's spiral tusk was formed from what belonging to a woman dragged into the sea?

Her twisted hair, worn in a knot, became the tusk as she herself turned into a narwhal. She had been pulled under by a line tied around her waist.

Which northern part of Canada has a narwhal and a caribou holding up the shield on its coat of arms?

Nunavut chose the pair to stand for the sustenance its people draw from land and sea. The arms were granted in 1999, a day before the territory itself came into being.

Narwhals are among the deepest-diving whales; roughly how deep was the deepest dive recorded for one?

2,370 metres is the record, close to a mile and a half down. In winter narwhals dive beyond 800 metres more than 15 times a day, staying under for up to 25 minutes.

Fossil evidence suggests that the narwhal's prehistoric relatives lived in which kind of waters?

Tropical seas were home to early members of the narwhal's family. They may have moved to the far north as the marine food chain changed.

Which oxygen-storing muscle protein, unusually abundant in narwhals, helps them stay under on long, deep dives?

Myoglobin holds oxygen inside the narwhal's slow-twitch muscles, which are built for endurance rather than bursts of speed.

What often kills narwhals that fail to leave their summer grounds before the Arctic freezes over in late autumn?

Suffocation follows when the ice closes over and is too thick to break. Around 1,000 carcasses were found after such entrapments in 1914 and 1915, many of them in Disko Bay.

Unicorn horn, the legendary cure-all that was in practice usually narwhal tusk, is also known by which name?

Alicorn was sold in chips and dust at apothecaries until the 18th century. Whole horns were grand enough to serve as diplomatic gifts between rulers.

Genetic studies show the narwhal's family is most closely related to which other group of small cetaceans?

Porpoises and the narwhal's family form a branch of their own, one that split from the other dolphins about 11 million years ago.

Which physician showed in 1638 that the unicorn horns prized across Europe were really narwhal tusks?

Ole Worm's finding spread slowly. Powder passed off as unicorn horn was still being sold as medicine in Europe as late as 1741.

In winter narwhals surface to breathe in long fractures through the pack ice known by what name?

Leads widen into channels as spring arrives, and the narwhals follow them back to the coastal bays where they spend the summer.