Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Cetacea > Monodontidae > Monodon > Monodon monoceros

Monodon monoceros (Narwhal)

Synonyms:
Language: French

Wikipedia Abstract

(This article is about the species of whale. For the class of submarine, see Narwhal class submarine.) The narwhal, or narwhale (Monodon monoceros), is a medium-sized toothed whale that possesses a large "tusk" from a protruding canine tooth. It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia. It is one of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale. The narwhal males are distinguished by a long, straight, helical tusk, which is an elongated upper left canine. The narwhal was one of many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his publication Systema Naturae in 1758.
View Wikipedia Record: Monodon monoceros

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
10
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
47
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 21.32
EDGE Score: 3.8
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Gestation [2]  1 year 2 months
Litter Size [2]  1
Litters / Year [2]  0.3
Maximum Longevity [2]  50 years
Migration [1]  Intraoceanic
Snout to Vent Length [4]  19 feet (565 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Pelagic, Coastal
Weaning [2]  1 year 8 months
Adult Weight [2]  1.378 tons (1,250.00 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  176.371 lbs (80.00 kg)
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [3]  60 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  40 %
Forages - Marine [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  6 years
Male Maturity [2]  8 years

Protected Areas

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Homo sapiens (man)[5]
Odobenus rosmarus (Walrus)[6]
Orcinus orca (Killer Whale)[5]
Somniosus microcephalus (gray shark)[5]
Ursus maritimus (Polar Bear)[7]

Providers

Parasite of 
Trichinella spiralis (pork worm)[5]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Halocercus monoceris[8]
Hysterothylacium rigidum[8]
Pharurus alatus[8]
Pseudoterranova decipiens[8]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 6Monodon monoceros, Randall R. Reeves and Sharon Tracey, Mammalian Species No. 127, pp. 1-7 (1980)
♦ 7Diet composition of polar bears in Svalbard and the western Barents Sea, Andrew E. Derocher, Øystein Wiig, Magnus Andersen, Polar Biol (2002) 25: 448–452
♦ 8Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0