Horned whales, also known as narwhals and bilback whales, are irregularly distributed in Arctic waters and the North Atlantic. Although it is called a "narwhal", the long thing that sticks out of its front is not a horn, but a tooth. Horned whales are deep divers who forage at depths in the ocean.
Realm: Animal kingdom Animalia
Phylum: Phylum Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Cetacea
Family: Monodontidae
Genus: Monodon
Species: One-horned whale M. monoceros
Male horned whales average 4.1 meters in length, and female horned whales average 3.5 meters in length and weigh 800-1600 kg. Some large male individuals can reach up to 5.5 meters.
The ratio of a horned whale to a human
Adult whales are white in color with black spots scattered on the back. Older individuals are almost entirely white, with black areas still visible only in the center of the back, on the top of the head, and on the edges of the pectoral fins. The newborn whale is pale grey and almost completely black by the time of weaning, after which white patches gradually appear on the abdomen and flanks.
The posterior edge of the tail fin of an adult whale is as conspicuously protruding as a convex mirror, which is reminiscent of butterfly wings when the observer looks down from the plane. The whale does not have a dorsal fin , but has a low, fleshy bulge in the posterior half of its back. The pectoral fins are small and broad, but short in length, with slight upward curvatures at the ends.
The head of a horned whale is small and round, with no protruding beak. The forehead bulges out and is slightly upturned in front of the mouth.
The left of the two teeth in the upper jaws of male whales (including a very small number of females) protrudes from the lips and continues to grow, reaching 2.7 meters long and weighing more than 10 kilograms.
The tusks are mostly left-handed, mostly hollow inside, and the shaft remains straight, but sometimes torsional. A very small number of male whales (about 1 in 500) will protrude even the right tooth out of the lip, forming a rare case of "double tusks", and the extra right teeth will usually be shorter than the left one.
During the summer, the whales usually form large groups of hundreds of heads, including smaller, more closely related groups of about twenty or so, usually composed of whales of the same sex or age group.
When drift ice is prevalent in winter, the distribution of the whale appears to be more dispersed and isolated, perhaps due to fissures and holes in the ice that vary in distance.
One-horned whales often have behaviors such as floating peeping and whale tail hitting waves, but jumping to hit waves is often rare. The jet height is low and not noticeable.
Horned whales are deep divers who feed at depths in the ocean, feeding mainly on pelagic fish (especially cod), squid, shrimp, and benthic organisms such as Greenland halibut.
A gesture of a whale parade
Dives can take up to 20 minutes and are more than 1000 meters deep. A horned whale appears to have sucked its prey into its mouth and swallowed it whole, rather than using tusks to poke its prey.
Judging by the high incidence of head wounds and trauma, as well as the high incidence of tooth breaks, adult males seem to have a habit of fighting with each other, which may be to establish a field or compete for mating opportunities.
Polar bears are known to hunt whales in small ponds with open waters between ice floes, and killer whales hunt them in shallow nearshore waters during the summer months. They don't have mass strandings, but whales are prone to accidental death due to wind blowing or rapidly forming sea ice.