Narwhals travelling along their narwhallian highways to get to Nar-whal-nia
Rare Photographs of the Narwhal
In one of the most isolated areas on Earth, a diver at the North Pole has captured rare photographs of the elusive narwhal. Daniel Botelho captured the extraordinary images of the area and the famously shy narwhals, and is followed closely by one, in a moment natives describe as ‘magical’.
He recently embarked on a mission to locate and photograph the legendary “unicorn of the sea”: the narwhal. It was a North Pole adventure even he realized was likely to end in failure, because narwhals are famously shy around boats and people, and very few underwater photographs of the strange-looking mammals exist.
But Botelho, who was working on a project for Disney and gathering material for an upcoming book, did more than photograph narwhals. One of them, a female, became curious of the photographer and followed him as he swam through the frozen waters of the high Arctic.
The mouth of a narwhal has no teeth. The narwhal’s only visible tooth is outside of its mouth. Its tusk, in fact, is a giant canine tooth—that can grow as long as 9 feet—with a distinct left-hand spiral, covered in a tissue called cementum, normally only found around the base of a tooth lodged in bone.
Photo credit: Martin Nweeia
This narwhal skull has double tusks, a rare trait in narwhals. Usually, males have a single long tusk, the canine on the left side of the upper jaw.
This two-tusked Narwhal skull is a rare example, as males usually only have one. Narwhals are toothed-whales and in males, one tooth erupts as a long tusk. In rare case, both front teeth erupt, giving two tusks. Each tooth/tusk was a little under 2m long. Hunde Island, Greenland
Photo credit: Tim Melling