Can you ride a narwhal

With its small pectoral fins right behind its gills, absence of pelvic fins, long dorsal and ventral fins and the thin coat of mucus on its tiny scales, the adult eel slightly resembles a slimy snake but are in fact true fish. Adult eels vary in coloration, from olive green and brown to greenish-yellow, with a light gray or white belly. Females are lighter in colour than males.

Large females turn dark grey or silver when they mature. The American Eel is the only representative of its genus or group of related species in North America, but it does have a close relative which shares the same spawning area: the European Eel. Both have similar lifecycles but different distributions in freshwater systems except in Iceland, where both and hybrids of both species can be found. The American Lobster Homarus americanus is a marine invertebrate which inhabits our Atlantic coastal waters.

As an invertebrate, it lacks bones, but it does have an external shell, or exoskeleton, making it an arthropod like spiders and insects. Its body is divided in two parts: the cephalothorax its head and body and its abdomen, or tail.

On its head, the lobster has eyes that are very sensitive to movement and light, which help it to spot predators and prey, but are unable to see colours and clear images.

It also has three pairs of antennae, a large one and two smaller ones, which are its main sensory organs and act a bit like our nose and fingers. Around its mouth are small appendages called maxillipeds and mandibles which help direct food to the mouth and chew.

Lobsters have ten legs, making them decapod ten-legged crustaceans, a group to which shrimp and crabs also belong other arthropods have a different number of legs, like spiders, which have eight, and insects, which have six. Four pairs of these legs are used mainly to walk and are called pereiopods.

The remaining pair, at the front of the cephalothorax, are called chelipeds and each of those limbs ends with a claw.

These claws help the lobster defend itself, but also capture and consume its prey. Each claw serves a different purpose: the bigger, blunter one is used for crushing, and the smaller one with sharper edges, for cutting. The Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica is a medium-sized songbird, about the size of a sparrow. It measures between 15 and 18 centimeters cm in length and 29 to 32 cm in wingspan, and weighs between 15 and 20 grams g.

Its back and tail plumage is a distinctive steely, iridescent blue, with light brown or rust belly and a chestnut-coloured throat and forehead. Their long forked tail and pointed wings also make them easily recognizable.

Both sexes may look similar, but females are typically not as brightly coloured and have shorter tails than males. When perched, this swallow looks almost conical because of its flat, short head, very short neck and its long body. Although the average lifespan of a Barn Swallow is about four years, a North American individual older than eight years and a European individual older than 16 years have been observed.

Sights and sounds: Like all swallows, the Barn Swallow is diurnal —it is active during the day, from dusk to dawn.

It is an agile flyer that creates very acrobatic patterns in flight. It can fly from very close to the ground or water to more than 30 m heights. When not in flight, the Barn Swallow can be observed perched on fences, wires, TV antennas or dead branches.

Both male and female Barn Swallows sing both individually and in groups in a wide variety of twitters, warbles, whirrs and chirps. They give a loud call when threatened, to which other swallows will react, leaving their nests to defend the area. Freshwater turtles are reptiles, like snakes, crocodilians and lizards. They also have a scaly skin, enabling them, as opposed to most amphibians, to live outside of water.

Also like many reptile species, turtles lay eggs they are oviparous. But what makes them different to other reptiles is that turtles have a shell. This shell, composed of a carapace in the back and a plastron on the belly, is made of bony plates. These bones are covered by horny scutes made of keratin like human fingernails or leathery skin, depending on the species. All Canadian freshwater turtles can retreat in their shells and hide their entire body except the Common Snapping Turtle Chelydra serpentina.

This shell is considered perhaps the most efficient form of armour in the animal kingdom, as adult turtles are very likely to survive from one year to the next. Indeed, turtles have an impressively long life for such small animals. Most other species can live for more than 20 years. There are about species of turtles throughout the world, inhabiting a great variety of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems on every continent except Antarctica and its waters.

In Canada, eight native species of freshwater turtles and four species of marine turtles can be observed. Another species, the Pacific Pond Turtle Clemmys marmorata , is now Extirpated, having disappeared from its Canadian range. Also, the Eastern Box Turtle Terrapene carolina has either such a small population that it is nearly Extirpated, or the few individuals found in Canada are actually pets released in the wild.

More research is needed to know if these turtles are still native individuals. Finally, the Red-eared Slider Trachemys scripta elegans , has been introduced to Canada as released pets and, thus, is not a native species.

Females tend to be slightly larger than males but are otherwise identical. As its name implies, it is pale tan to reddish or dark brown with a slightly paler belly, and ears and wings that are dark brown to black. Contrary to popular belief, Little Brown Bats, like all other bats, are not blind.

Still, since they are nocturnal and must navigate in the darkness, they are one of the few terrestrial mammals that use echolocation to gather information on their surroundings and where prey are situated. The echolocation calls they make, similar to clicking noises, bounce off objects and this echo is processed by the bat to get the information they need.

These noises are at a very high frequency, and so cannot be heard by humans. Of the species of woodpeckers worldwide, 13 are found in Canada.

The smallest and perhaps most familiar species in Canada is the Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens. It is also the most common woodpecker in eastern North America. This woodpecker is black and white with a broad white stripe down the back from the shoulders to the rump. The crown of the head is black; the cheeks and neck are adorned with black and white lines.

Male and female Downy Woodpeckers are about the same size, weighing from 21 to 28 g. The male has a small scarlet patch, like a red pompom, at the back of the crown. The Downy Woodpecker looks much like the larger Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus , but there are some differences between them. The Downy is about 6 cm smaller than the Hairy, measuring only 15 to 18 cm from the tip of its bill to the tip of its tail. Woodpeckers are a family of birds sharing several characteristics that separate them from other avian families.

Most of the special features of their anatomy are associated with the ability to dig holes in wood. The straight, chisel-shaped bill is formed of strong bone overlaid with a hard covering and is quite broad at the nostrils in order to spread the force of pecking.

A covering of feathers over the nostrils keeps out pieces of wood and wood powder. The pelvic bones are wide, allowing for attachment of muscles strong enough to move and hold the tail, which is important for climbing. Another special anatomical trait of woodpeckers is the long, barbed tongue that searches crevices and cracks for food.

The salivary glands produce a sticky, glue-like substance that coats the tongue and, along with the barbs, makes the tongue an efficient device for capturing insects. Signs and sounds. As early as February or March a Downy Woodpecker pair indicate that they are occupying their nesting site by flying around it and by drumming short, fast tattoos with their bills on dry twigs or other resonant objects scattered about the territory.

The drumming serves as a means of communication between the members of the pair as well. Downys also have a variety of calls. They utter a tick, tchick, tcherrick , and both the male and the female add a sharp whinnying call during the nesting season. Hatchlings give a low, rhythmic pip note, which seems to indicate contentment. When a parent enters the nest cavity, the nestlings utter a rasping begging call, which becomes stronger and longer as the chicks mature.

Its name comes from the partial webs between its toes. Males and females are identical in rather plain brown or grey plumage although females are slightly larger. The species can be difficult to distinguish from other small sandpipers.

Semipalmated Sandpipers moult, or shed, their body feathers twice a year. The change to the greyish-brown fall-winter plumage usually starts on the breeding grounds and is completed after arrival on the non-breeding area.

The moult that takes place on the non-breeding area prior to spring migration gives them a slightly brighter more brown breeding plumage. Adults moult their flight feathers wings and tail gradually—retaining the ability to fly at all times—and only once per year, usually in the non-breeding area.

Some juveniles do not replace any flight feathers in their first winter, as these are quite new. Others, however, moult some of the outermost primaries outer wing feathers , which are important for flight and wear most rapidly. The scientific name for the Ruffed Grouse is Bonasa umbellus. Both terms are from the Latin: Bonasa means good when roasted and umbellus , a sunshade. This refers to the ruff or dark-coloured neck feathers that are particularly large in the male.

When he is in display before the female, these are erected and surround his head almost like an umbrella. By nodding his head and ruffs, and spreading his tail and strutting, the male identifies himself to the female and encourages her advances. The male Ruffed Grouse is about the size of a bantam chicken and weighs about g. The females are smaller. Unlike the chicken, the grouse has a broad flat tail that is usually held down but that may be erected and spread into a half circle. The dappled and barred plumage ranges in colour from pale grey through sombre red to rich mahogany.

In the east, most grouse are predominantly grey, although some are red. Greys are in the majority in the central parts of the continent, and on the west coast most grouse are reddish brown. The colours worn by the grouse are related to their habitat: the dark-coloured grouse inhabit dark forest, as on the coast; grey grouse live in lighter bush. This camouflage helps protect the grouse from their predators. Males are hard to tell from females at a distance, but they are larger with larger ruffs and a longer tail.

In the male the broad band of dark colour in the tail is usually unbroken. The Ruffed Grouse is only distantly related to the Gray Partridge, which is a bird of open areas, not woodlands. Everyone who has visited the coast is familiar with gulls, those graceful, long-winged birds that throng the beaches and harbours and boldly beg for scraps.

The gulls are a family of birds that live mainly at sea, either along the shore, or out in the ocean itself. Worldwide, there are more than species of birds that live either partially or exclusively at sea, and these are generally known as "seabirds. The table below lists the 14 families of marine birds and the approximate number of species in each the exact number of species is continually being revised as genetic research reveals that some very similar-looking birds are so different in their genetic makeup that they constitute different species.

All species belonging to the albatross, auk, frigatebird, gannet, penguin, petrel, and storm-petrel families feed exclusively at sea. In addition, many species of cormorants, grebes, gulls, jaegers, loons, pelicans and terns feed either entirely or mainly at sea.

The Phalaropes are the only shorebirds that feed at sea. The number of species that breed in Canada are shown in parentheses. Ducks and grebes that feed at sea are not included.

Adult coho salmon have silvery sides and metallic blue backs with irregular black spots. Spawning males have bright red sides, and bright green backs and heads, with darker colouration on their bellies. The fish have hooked jaws and sharp teeth. Young coho salmon are aggressive, territorial and often vibrantly coloured, with a large orange anal fin edged in black and white. Ptarmigans are hardy members of the grouse family that spend most of their lives on the ground at or above the treeline.

Like other grouse, ptarmigans have chunky bodies, short tails and legs, and short, rounded wings. Willow Ptarmigans weigh from to g, White-tailed Ptarmigans weigh about g, and Rock Ptarmigans are intermediate in size.

All ptarmigans have feathered feet, unique among chickenlike birds, which improve their ability to walk in snow. They also have white wings throughout the year. Inflatable red combs above their eyes, which are especially evident in territorial and courting males, are inconspicuous to barely visible in females.

Ptarmigans have three seasonal plumages per year, instead of the two that are usual for most birds. These plumages keep the birds, particularly the female, well camouflaged at all times. In winter, all ptarmigans of both sexes are basically white.

Narwhals travel to depths where there is intense pressure and no oxygen, which requires special adaptations for survival. The pressure problem is in part solved by having a compressible rib cage which is flexible and can be squeezed as the water depth increases. Narwhals also need mechanisms for bringing along as much oxygen as they can from the surface.

They have a few solutions. Narwhals have a high concentration of myoglobin in their muscles a molecule which binds oxygen : twice as much as some seal species and eight times as much as terrestrial mammals, even those specialized in fast running. An average-size narwhal can carry 70 L of oxygen in its lungs, blood, and muscles.

Furthermore, the narwhal does not have fast-twitch fibers in its skeletal muscles like a dolphin but instead has muscles that are suited for endurance swimming and are less oxygen demanding.

During its dive, a narwhal can save oxygen by shutting off blood flow to selected organs or non-critical body parts. Finally, narwhals have streamlined bodies and can glide easily through the water column towards the bottom.

This helps minimize oxygen consumption to work the muscles and ultimately saves energy. Narwhals make deep dives to feed on the bottom of Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. Narwhals change their diet seasonally. In winter, they feed intensively on Greenland halibut or Gonatus squid. Greenland halibut are flatfish found on the bottom of the sea. The summer ice-free season between July and September is not used for intense feeding and whales have very little in their stomachs.

Narwhals can make daily dives to more than meters as many as 25 times per day for 6 months. Identifying what narwhals eat has proven to be a difficult task. Narwhals prefer waters far offshore covered in sea ice where they eat at great depths in complete darkness. Because of this, no direct observations of narwhal feeding have ever been made. An alternate method is to examine prey items in the stomachs of dead whales. Narwhals are harvested by local people throughout much of their range and in all seasons, therefore it is possible to collect the entire stomach sometimes over 35 kg from narwhals, freeze them, and send them to a laboratory for examination.

Hundreds of narwhal stomachs have been examined in the laboratory and several interesting patterns have been identified. Narwhals eat only a few prey species. Their primary prey are Greenland halibut; however, they also feed on polar and Arctic cod, shrimp and Gonatus squid. Occasional exceptions have included wolffish, capelin, skate eggs and sometimes rocks, accidentally ingested when whales feed near the bottom.

Very few other prey items have been found in narwhal stomachs, implying that narwhals have a very restricted and specialized diet. The size of narwhal prey vary. Greenland halibut eaten by narwhals range from cm in length and weigh between grams. Squid eaten by narwhals are much smaller and weigh on average 23 grams.

Narwhals are the only whale that winters in the dense Arctic pack ice. They are not permanent features and constantly appearing and disappearing and moving around. The reason narwhals return year after year to an area with such dense sea ice cover is unclear. Although some believe these whales are seeking refuge from killer whales, it is more likely that narwhals need access to predictable prey.

Therefore the reliable Greenland halibut resources of Baffin Bay provide an attractive food source for surviving the harsh arctic winter. During an ice entrapment, hundreds of whales might become trapped in a small opening in the sea ice and they often die. This occurs when sudden changes in weather conditions such as shifts in wind or quick drops in temperature freeze the open water and the leads and cracks are sealed shut.

Narwhals occupy dense pack ice for half of the year and are incapable of breaking holes in dense ice. There have been no direct observations of narwhal ice entrapments in central Baffin Bay because the area they routinely occupy is hundreds of kilometers from shore and is rarely visited by humans.

There are, however, reports of large coastal ice entrapments in areas near where humans live. A narwhals dive to 1, meters can last 25 minutes, that is about the average length of one American TV sitcom. Yes, narwhals make a wide range of clicks and whistles underwater. Their sounds seem to vary in summer and winter. They use the clicks, or echolocation, to detect objects in the water like prey , for navigation and communication.

Yes, narwhal research projects are often conducted in collaboration with local native communities. Hunters are employed on all projects as assistants and are frequently the most important part of a successful field project. Hunters have participated on aerial surveys, expeditions to capture and tag narwhals, sampling harvested narwhals, and on trips out to the pack ice in helicopters.

They also sometimes come to scientific management meetings. In all field projects, hunters have contributed their knowledge, skill, and experience, critical to the success of the research. Narwhals are very important to native communities. They have been harvested for subsistence for thousands of years by people in Arctic villages in both Canada and Greenland.

These people rely heavily on the narwhal for food. In Greenland, most of the narwhal is eaten, including the meat, the blubber, the skin and the organs. Sometimes carvings or art pieces are made out of the bones or the tusk. The narwhal hunt is an important part of cultural identity and communities look forward to the arrival of the narwhal hunting season all year. Finally, the narwhal hunt in North Greenland is one of the last places where traditional kayak and harpoon hunting methods are used.

Narwhals live in an Arctic environment that is rapidly changing. In order to understand how they interact with their environment and how their population sizes, movements, distribution, or behavior will adapt to the changes currently happening and predicted in the Arctic, it is vital to develop a baseline, or basic understanding of their ecology. Much of what the world knows about the narwhal's picky eating habits comes from Laidre's research, particularly a study that offered the first evidence of the whales' winter diet, which is heavy in squid, arctic cod and Greenland halibut.

She is the co-author of the book Greenland's Winter Whales. Basic questions drive her work. How many narwhals are there? Where do they travel and why? Greenland's government funds part of her expeditions, and her findings influence how the narwhal hunting season is managed. As Greenland modernizes, Laidre hopes to raise public awareness about the whales and their significance to the people and environment of the north. Especially now that the climate seems to be warming, narwhals, Laidre believes, will be seriously affected by melting.

The alabaster beluga's dark cousin, the narwhal is not a conventionally beautiful animal. Its unlovely name means "corpse whale," because its splotchy flesh reminded Norse sailors of a drowned body. And unlike other whales, narwhals—which can live more than years—die shortly in captivity, greatly reducing the opportunity to study them. The whales mate in cracks of ice in the dead of winter, in pitch darkness, when the wind chill can drive the air temperature to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

While shifting currents and winds create breaks in the ice, enabling the animals to surface and breathe, the whales must keep moving to avoid getting trapped. Because of the extreme cold, calves are born husky, about one-third the size of their foot-long, 2,pound mothers. Like belugas and bowheads, which also inhabit arctic waters, narwhals are about 50 percent body fat; other whales are closer to 20 or 30 percent.

No one has ever seen a submerged narwhal eat. Laidre led a study of the stomach contents of narwhals that suggested they fast in summer and gorge on fish in winter. Fond of bottom-dwelling prey like Greenland halibut, narwhals are incredibly deep divers. When Mads Peter Heide-Jorgensen, Laidre's Danish colleague and frequent collaborator, pioneered narwhal-tagging techniques in the early s, his transmitters kept breaking under the water pressure.

Five hundred meters, 1,, 1,—the whales, which have compressible rib cages, kept plunging. They bottomed out around 1, meters—more than a mile deep. At such depths, the whales apparently swim upside down much of the time.

The whales' most dazzling feature, of course, is the swizzle-stick tusk that sprouts from their upper left jaw. Though the whales' scientific name is Monodon monoceros , "one tooth, one horn," an occasional male has two tusks the NMNH has two rare specimens and only 3 percent of females have a tusk at all. The solitary fang, which is filled with dental pulp and nerves like an ordinary tooth, can grow thick as a lamppost and taller than a man, and it has a twist.

On living whales, it's typically green with algae and alive with sea lice at its base. No one's sure precisely how or why it evolved—it has been called a weapon, an ice pick, a kind of dousing rod for fertile females, a sensor of water temperature and salinity, and a lure for prey. Herman Melville joked that it was a letter opener. The question comes up a lot at cocktail parties.

Most scientists, Laidre included, side with Charles Darwin, who speculated in The Descent of Man that the ivory lance was a secondary sex characteristic, like a moose's antlers, useful in establishing dominance hierarchies. Males have been observed gently jousting with their teeth—the scientific term is "tusking"—when females are nearby.

The tooth, Laidre patiently explains, cannot be essential because most females survive without one. In , Greenland set narwhal-hunting quotas for the first time, despite some hunters' protests, and banned the export of the tusks, halting a thousand-year-old trade.

Conservationists—newly roiled this past summer by the discovery of dozens of dead narwhals in East Greenland, the tusks chopped out of the skulls and the meat left to rot—want still more restrictions.

It's estimated there are at least 80, of the animals, but nobody knows for sure. The International Union for Conservation of Nature this year said the species was "near threatened. To track the whales, Laidre and Heide-Jorgensen have collaborated with hunters on Greenland's west coast and were just starting to build relationships in the village of Niaqornat when I asked to tag along. We would arrive in late October and the scientists would remain through mid-November, as darkness descended and the ice glided into the fjords, and the pods of whales, which they suspect summer in Melville Bay several hundred miles north, made their way south.

It was a time frame that some of Laidre's colleagues in Seattle, many of them climate scientists who prefer to study the Arctic via buoy and robotic plane, considered vaguely insane. When Laidre, Heide-Jorgensen and I first reached the village, after a two-hour boat ride that involved rounding icebergs in the inky blackness of a late arctic afternoon, the sled dogs greeted us like hysterical fans at a rock concert while villagers crowded the boat, reaching in to pull out our luggage and hollering at Laidre in Greenlandic.

Niaqornat pop. The settlement sits hard against a white wall of mountains, where men hunting arctic grouse leave tiny red droplets in their footsteps on the slopes: blackberries crushed under the snow. Greenland has its own home-rule government but remains a Danish possession, and thanks to the Danish influence the town is fully wired, with personal computers glowing like hearths in almost every living room.

But none of the houses, including the drafty three-room field station used by Laidre and other scientists, has plumbing or running water; the kerosene stoves that keep the water from freezing are easily puffed out by the ripping wind, which also brings waves bashing against the town's scrap of black beach. With its tide line of pulverized ice crystals, the beach is the chaotic center of village life, scattered with oil drums, anchors and the hunters' little open boats, some of which are decorated with arctic fox tails like lucky giant rabbit's feet.

There are waterfront drying racks hung with seal ribs, waxen-looking strips of shark and other fish, and the occasional musk ox head masked with ice. Throughout the town, sled dogs are staked to the frozen ground; there are at least three times as many dogs as people. Signs of narwhals are everywhere, especially now that the tusk market has been shut down and hunters can't sell the ivory for gas money and other expenses.

The whales' undeveloped inner teeth are strung up over front porches like clothespins on a line. A thick tooth is proudly mounted on the wall of the little building that serves as the town hall, school, library and church complete with sealskin kneelers.

It seems the fashion to lean a big tusk across a house's front window. The narwhals typically arrive in November, darting into the fjord in pursuit of gonatus squid, and Niaqornat men in motorboats shoot the animals with rifles.

But in the springtime, when the whales pass by again on their way north, the hunters work in the old way, driving their dog sleds out into the ice-covered fjord. Then they creep in single file, wearing sealskin boots so as not to make a sound—even a clenched toe can make the ice creak.

They get as close as they can to the surfacing whales, then hurl their harpoons. In the darkness they can tell the difference between a beluga and a narwhal by the sound of their breathing. And if the hunters can't hear anything, they search them out by smell. During the Middle Ages, and even earlier, narwhal tusk was sold in Europe and the Far East as unicorn horn.

Physicians believed that powdered unicorn horn could cure ills from plague to rabies and even raise the dead. It seems also to have been marketed as a precursor to Viagra, and it rivaled snake's tongue and griffin's claw as a detector of poison.

Since poisonings were all the rage in medieval times, "unicorn horn" became one of the most coveted substances in Europe, worth ten times its weight in gold. French monarchs dined with narwhal-tooth utensils; Martin Luther was fed powdered tusk as medicine before he died. The ivory spiral was used to make the scepter of the Hapsburgs, Ivan the Terrible's staff, the sword of Charles the Bold.

Historians have not definitively identified where the ancient tusks originated, though one theory is that the narwhals were harvested in the Siberian Arctic where, for unknown reasons, they no longer live. But in the late s the Vikings happened upon Greenland, swarming with narwhals, their teeth more precious than polar bear pelts and the live falcons they could hawk to Arabian princes. Norse longboats rowed north in pursuit of the toothed whales, braving summer storms to trade with the Skraelings, as the Vikings called the Inuit, whom they despised.

It was Laidre's intellectual ancestors, the Enlightenment scientists, who ruined the racket. In , the Danish scholar Ole Wurm refuted the unicorn myth, showing that the prized horn material came from narwhals, and others followed suit. In , faced with mounting evidence, British physicians abruptly stopped prescribing the horn as a wonder drug though the Apothecaries' Society of London had already incorporated unicorns into its coat of arms.

To the Inuit, the whale and its horn are hardly luxury goods. Greenlanders traditionally used every part of the animal, burning its blubber in lamps, using the back sinews to sew boots and clothes and the skin for dog sled traces.