Apparently, when a pod of wild beluga whales ran into a lost male narwhal—a kind of toothed whale—in the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, they befriended him and took him in as one of their own.
That was an unusual sight, as narwhals, also referred to as “Unicorns of the Sea,” due to their legendary tusk, are an arctic-dwelling whale.
Though it was supposed to live in the Arctic some 1,000 kilometers away, the young porpoise with a half-meter-long tusk has been spotted among the beluga whales, around the St. Lawrence River, for the past three years.
Robert Michaud, GREMM’s president and scientific director, observed that the narwhal constantly rubbed against his beluga friends and even behaved “like it was one of the boys.”
Like the beluga whales, the narwhal kept blowing bubbles every now and then.
The narwhal might have seen himself as one of the belugas, probably because these two highly sociable species of whales come from the same cetacean family—the monodontidae.
However, despite belonging to the same Monodontidae family, it’s still rare for the beluga whales to come into close contact with the narwhals in the northern waters, according to University of Washington researcher Kristin Laidre.
If this story could teach us anything, it would be “the compassion and the openness of other species to welcome another member that may not look or act the same,” said Martin Nweeia, a researcher at Harvard University.
This lost narwhal is sure lucky to find some companions 1,000 kilometers away from home!
Hopefully, the stray narwhal and his beluga friends—both threatened species—will continue to thrive in the wild, frolicking in the waters together.
