Every year, the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals head down to the St. Lawrence River in the Canadian province of Quebec to study the beluga whales that travel through. This year, they saw something strange: a juvenile narwhal that appeared to have been adopted by the pod.
This is strange because narwhals generally live in the Arctic waters of Canada, Norway, Greenland, and Russia. In the winter months, they live under the sea ice of Baffin Bay. This lost narwhal was hundreds of miles from home, and according to researchers, he was doing just fine. “It behaves like it was one of the boys,” Robert Michaud, GREMM’s president and scientific director, told CBC News. According to IFL Science, Llike narwhals, beluga whales are primarily found in the Arctic. The ones that travel up the St. Lawrence River, however, are a little different. The group of 120 (or so) belugas there don’t migrate as far as normal pods.
This is the third year in a row the young narwhal has been seen with the pod, leading researchers to believe that it has well and truly been adopted by the group. This year, after launching the drone, they were pleased to spot the narwhal again. “To our surprise,” GREMM researchers wrote, “the narwhal is amongst them! After the initial excitement of this discovery, our first question was: is this the same individual as the one observed in 2016 and 2017? We, therefore, landed the drone and took out our camera to take a few snapshots. After photographing our vagrant as well as his companions from both sides, we were able to confirm that it was indeed the same narwhal.”
It’s not all that uncommon to see one species welcome another into the group—a fact that one expert thinks we could learn a lot from. “I don’t think it should surprise people,” said Martin Nweeia, a researcher at Harvard University. “I think it shows the compassion and the openness of other species to welcome another member that may not look or act the same. And maybe that’s a good lesson for everyone.”
