Monodon monoceros - The Narwhal

The Sea Unicorne

Nar is an old Norse word meaning corpse. So the narwhal is the 'corpse whale'. It has a greyish mottled appearance and lies still in the water, much like a drowned mariner. I think we can do better. Linneaus called her Monodon monoceros – one-tooth-one-horn: Not a vast improvement! Sir Humphrey Gilbert, upon presenting a pair of bejewelled tusks (valued at £10 000 – twice the going rate for a castle) to Queen Elizabeth I, called her the Sea Unicorne. I’ll take that!

The sea unicorne is the closest living relative of the beluga whale and shares a great deal in common with that species. It is even believed that hybrids have been born from matings between the species. The best known and most striking feature of the this animal is, of course, the tusk. Only about 15% of females grow them, but all males do. About one in 500 males grow a pair of tusks and there is one known example of a female with two, whose skeletal remains currently reside, on display, at the Natural History Museum in Hamburg, Germany. 

Rare double female tusk at the NHM Hamburg

The tusks are canine teeth that have grown to an extraordinary size. The average length of the sea unicorne is a little over 13ft, although they can reach up to 18ft, and their tusks can reach up to 10ft in length. They are formed as a hollow helix and males are often seen rubbing tusks together, not so much as aggressive competition, as once thought, but possibly as a means of communication, sharing information about such things as the chemical composition of waters they have recently visited. 

Most whales have vertebrae which are fused together, giving them great strength and rigidity, but the sea unicorne (as well as the beluga) has a spine like land animals and can turn its head about in rather a disarming fashion.

Scene from 'When the whales came'

They are well enough known to have appeared in various forms in traditional lore and popular fiction. There's an Inuit legend about narwhals which describes an old woman who, while trying to catch a whale, gets her harpoon into the animal but is then dragged into the sea. She became the first narwhal and she was wearing her hair in a twisted plait, which became the famous tusk. Narwhals feature both in Moby Dick (book II chapter III) and a giant version in chapter II of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. They are the eponymous whales of the novel 'Why the Whales Came' by Michael Morpurgo, and the 1989 film adaptation 'When the Whales Came' - which is well well worth a watch. 

Bizarre narwhal toy

There is no evidence at all that they use their tusks to impale seals, and certainly no narwhal has ever so much as seen a penguin, since they live in the Arctic and penguins stick to the southern hemisphere, but I felt I ought include the image of this toy as an example of a modern cetological cultural artifact. There's a lovely little clip from an Attenborough film here.