The narwhal is an aquatic animal that belongs to the family of Monodontidae and is the second representative of this same family, preceded only by the beluga.
Its natural habitat is the Arctic Ocean, and in fact, it is considered the cetacean that lives further north. While when you need the narwhal coloring pages to print, here is the right place.
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An element to underline is that the animal loves to live in the proximity of the polar ice sheet, and it isn’t straightforward to find it far from it.
The most numerous populations of narwhals can be found in Greenland and Canada. Usually, this cetacean prefers very salty waters and prefers to stay in deep waters.
It may move to more southerly areas during the summer months, then return north during the winter months.
It is now time to describe the characteristics of the narwhal. It can reach a length of about 4 – 4.7 meters – but from this length must be excluded the horn – and a weight of 1,000 – 1,600 kilos.
Male specimens are larger in size and weight than female specimens. On average, narwhals have a longevity of 50 years.
Regarding the snout, it must be said that this differs from that of odontocetes because it is flattened. Usually, the odontocetes have, in fact, a flattened snout, absent in this cetacean.
We must say then that the head is small, obviously putting it in proportion with the massive body of the cetacean.
A characteristic element is sexual dimorphism, an expression with which it is meant that there are some peculiar characteristics in the two sexes that allow to distinguish them easily one from the other.
These animals have only two teeth, and in the male, the tooth in the left arch grows throughout his life.
The growth leads to forming a sort of horn, which allows the male specimen to reach a much larger size than that provided by the body alone.
The tooth has a spiral growth and is typical of males. Only in sporadic cases, the continuous development of the tooth of the left arch occurs even in females of narwhals.
The narwhal horn can reach a length of 3 meters and can gain weight of 10 kilos. Scholars have not yet been able to figure out what the specific function of the horn is.
This is used during the mating phase to compete for females and probably also to scan the seabed, but there are still conflicting opinions about it.
We conclude with the behavior of the narwhal to understand how this cetacean behaves when in its natural habitat. Narwhals tend to prefer to live in groups.
However, these are not large groups but sets of a few individuals, usually ranging from a minimum of six to a maximum of twenty narwhals.
It has been explained before that there are also seasonal migrations: in the summer months, these cetaceans move to the most southern areas, and during the movement, different groups join, so it is not unusual to find groups composed of a thousand narwhals.
The males fight among themselves during the mating period to compete for the female specimens. The horn is then used as a weapon. Some specimens with damaged horns have been spotted.
However, the horns heal because the dentin reforms (it is remembered that the horn is not other than a tooth to continuous growth).
They are cetaceans; moreover, they dive a lot and reach a thousand meters of depth. These depths are matched only by a few other animals, among which the sperm whale is an example.