Andrea Barrett's novel about the era of discovery and exploration in the Arctic is intoxicating. Especially for me after a diet of mysteries and thrillers that are often entertaining but rarely memorable, reading truly literary fiction by a master is like breathing pure oxygen. Although the narwhal and the beluga are classified as separate genera, with one species each, there is some evidence that they may, very rarely, interbreed. The complete skull of an anomalous whale was discovered in West Greenland c. 1990. It was described by marine zoologists as unlike any known species, but with features midway between a narwhal and a beluga, consistent with the hypothesis that the anomalous whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid; [11] in 2019, this was confirmed by DNA and isotopic analysis. [12] a b c d e Hoover C, Bailey M, Higdon J, Ferguson SH, Sumalia R (March 2013). "Estimating the Economic Value of Narwhal and Beluga Hunts in Hudson Bay, Nunavut". The Arctic Institute of North America. 66: 1–16.

It is appropriate that a book focused on natural phenomenon should have lyrical prose. This does. Nature is beautiful and so the lines describing it must be beautiful too. The dialogs however are quite ordinary and sometimes anachronistic. Borenstein, Seth (25 April 2008). "Narwhals more at risk to Arctic warming than polar bears". Associated Press . Retrieved 27 April 2008. They are known by Inuits in Greenland as ‘qilalugaq qernartaq’ which means ‘the one that points to the sky’ and their Latin name is ‘Monodon monoceros’, meaning ‘one toothed’. What is the narwhal's tusk for?

Hilarious and charming. The most lovable duo since Frog and Toad.”—NYT-bestselling creator of the Dog Man and Captain Underpants series, Dav Pilkey

Nielsen M.R. (2009). "Is climate change causing the increasing narwhal ( Monodon monoceros) catches in Smith Sound, Greenland?". Polar Research. 28 (2): 238–245. Bibcode: 2009PolRe..28..238N. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-8369.2009.00106.x. S2CID 140711336. A 2.3 GB genome sequence has been assembled from multiple Illumina libraries. The genome consists of 37.9% repetitive elements and encodes 21,785 protein-coding genes (similar to many other mammals). The genome will help to place the narwhal both into the evolutionary context of other whales but also will help to understand the evolution and embryonic development of features such as the tusk and its sexual dimorphism. [35] Distribution Narwhals in the Creswell Bay at Somerset Island After posting this initially, I discovered some notes I made during the read, so I have done a bit of revision. 26/10/15 Erasmus's sister, Lavinia, who was betrothed to Zeke, waits like Penelope for the return of her beloved. Another childhood friend of the Welles, Alexandra, whose family has fallen on hard times, stays with her as a paid companion. The artistically inclined Alexandra gets involved in producing the engravings for the book of an earlier Arctic explorer, the real-life Kane. Hotjar sets this cookie when a Recording starts and is read when the recording module is initialized, to see if the user is already in a recording in a particular session.Narwhals live in groups of 10 to 20 individuals but in the summer they come together in groups of hundreds or even thousands of whales to migrate. They travel together, swimming fast and close to the surface. Sometimes they float, motionless at the surface and occasionally they will all leap out of the water or dive at the same time. We don’t know why they behave in this way but it’s sure to make perfect sense to them.

Porsild, M. (1918). "On 'Savssat': A crowding of Arctic animals at holes in the sea ice". Geogr Rev. 6 (3): 215–228. doi: 10.2307/207815. hdl: 2027/hvd.32044106197593. JSTOR 207815. S2CID 164155407. Waddell, V.G.; Milinkovitch, M.C.; Bérubé, M. & Stanhope, M.J. (2000). "Molecular Phylogenetic Examination of the Delphinoidea Trichotomy: Congruent Evidence from Three Nuclear Loci Indicates That Porpoises (Phocoenidae) Share a More Recent Common Ancestry with White Whales (Monodontidae) Than They Do with True Dolphins (Delphinidae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 15 (2): 314–318. doi: 10.1006/mpev.1999.0751. PMID 10837160. Interlaced through it is Barrett's wonderfully exact descriptions of the minutiae of flora and fauna that so impassioned the natural historians who filled those fusty museums with all those glass cases of bones and shells and produced all those engravings in lovingly crafted books. The reader learns to relish the very obscurity of the places and things described by the author. Many of these expeditions can be read as case histories in hubris, not only of particular men but of Western Civilization's “conquest” of Nature, of its metastasis of self-righteousness, of the thirst for power that would plunge it into World War I and shatter the illusion of moral progress. In this sense Andrea Barrett does not provide us with the warm glow of heroic myth, but rather projects modern day sensibilities, doubts and other, darker subtexts into this very well researched novel. The single-minded, larger than life heroes of exploration are shown to be men with uncommonly large feet of clay; anti-heroes and bullies who write themselves larger than life at the expense of those who served under them. Barrett undercuts them savagely: they confiscate their subordinates' work, plagiarize them, refuse to listen to good sense, thrust themselves shamelessly into the limelight, despise and ride roughshod over those they consider their inferiors, which is most of the rest of the world, and believe themselves invulnerable: None of his reading taught him the crucial thing. He could imagine the hardships faced by the explorers preceding us; but not that anything bad might happen to himself. A boy's belief.The subtexts give an idea what the official, the scientific societies and the public newspaper histories leave out: whalers refer disparagingly to the “discovery men”: ”It's what we call you arctic exploring types,” he said. “All you men who go on exploring expeditions, with funding and fanfare and special clothes, thinking you'll discover something. When every place you go some whaling ship has already been. We know more about the land and the currents than you ever will, and more about the habits of the whales and seals and walruses. a b Williams, Terrie M.; Noren, Shawn R.; Glenn, Mike (2011). "Extreme physiological adaptations as predictors of climate-change sensitivity in the narwhal, Mondon monceros". Marine Mammal Science. 27 (2): 334. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00408.x. S2CID 21839019.

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Jorge Vélez-Juarbe & Nicholas D. Pyenson (2012). " Bohaskaia monodontoides, a new monodontid (Cetacea, Odontoceti, Delphinoidea) from the Pliocene of the western North Atlantic Ocean". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 32 (2): 476–484. doi: 10.1080/02724634.2012.641705. S2CID 55606151. During the voyage to these exotic outposts in Greenland and northern Canada, the story is about the tension between Zeke and his crew, with Erasmus caught in the middle. Erasmus is drawn to the surgeon, Dr. Boerhaave, himself an amateur natural historian, and the young Irish immigrant cook, Ned Lynd, who apparently was a minor character in Barrett's earlier Ship Fever, which won a National Book Award. In harrowing detail, drawing on numerous journals of real explorers from that period, Barrett depicts the hardships of the voyage and the privations and dangers that set in once they are immobilized for the long, dark winter. I must have been about eleven or twelve years old when I first read Edward Evans' mythical treatment of Scott's tragic expedition to the South Pole ( South with Scott, 1921). It would take me decades to come across Roland Hartford's controversial 1979 debunking of the myth in The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole. In fact some years after the Apollo 11 moon landing, the ultimate twentieth century expedition linguistically and tellingly turned into a manned mission, novelists like Per Olof Sundman in The Flight Of The Eagle(1972) about S. A. Andrée's, a Swedish engineer, disastrous 1897 attempt to balloon to the North Pole, and Thomas Keneally in Victims of the Aurora (2001) came up with darker, more damning accounts of some of the great polar region explorers of the nineteenth century. I went through my science phase as a child and can easily relate to the fascination of Erasmus for discovering and collecting things. It is in fact the childlike enthusiasm of these early explorers that provides much of the energy of Barrett's historical fiction.

Monodon monoceros". Fisheries and Aquaculture Department: Species Fact Sheets. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Archived from the original on 16 February 2012 . Retrieved 20 November 2007. The most conspicuous characteristic of the male narwhal is a single long tusk, which is in fact a canine tooth [19] [20] that projects from the left side of the upper jaw, through the lip and forms a left-handed helical spiral. The tusk grows throughout life, reaching a length of about 1.5 to 3.1m (4.9 to 10.2ft). It is hollow and weighs around 10kg (22lb). About one in 500 males has two tusks, occurring when the right canine also grows out through the lip. Only about 15 per cent of females grow a tusk, [21] which typically is smaller than a male tusk, with a less noticeable spiral. [22] [23] [24] There is only one known case of a female growing a second tusk; the specimen (right) was collected in 1684. [25] Skovrind, M.l; Castruita, J. A. S.; Haile, J.; etal. (2019). "Hybridization between two high Arctic cetaceans confirmed by genomic analysis". Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 7729. Bibcode: 2019NatSR...9.7729S. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-44038-0. PMC 6586676. PMID 31221994. In the tradition of Uni the Unicorn and Gaston, this heartwarming and adorable debut picture book tells the story of a young unicorn who was born under the sea to a family of narwhals.

This is a unique anonymous session identifier cookie set by Microsoft Application Insights software to gather statistical usage and telemetry data for apps built on the Azure cloud platform. Inuit are able to hunt this whale species legally, as discussed above. Narwhals have been extensively hunted the same way as other sea mammals, such as seals and whales, for their large quantities of fat. Almost all parts of the narwhal; the meat, skin, blubber and organs are consumed. Muktuk, the name for raw skin and attached blubber, is considered a delicacy. One or two vertebrae per animal are used for tools and art. [56] [8] The skin is an important source of vitamin C which is otherwise difficult to obtain in the Arctic Circle. In some places in Greenland, such as Qaanaaq, traditional hunting methods are used and whales are harpooned from handmade kayaks. In other parts of Greenland and Northern Canada, high-speed boats and hunting rifles are used. [8] Their natural predators are polar bears, orcas and sharks and they have been hunted by Inuit for their skin, blubber and tusks for centuries. Narwhals are one of the deepest diving whales and can hold their breaths for an amazing 25 minutes. The longest recorded narwhal dive is 1,500 metres. What do narwhals eat? a b c Laidre, K. L.; Stirling, I.; Lowry, L.; Wiig, Ø.; Heide-Jørgensen, M. P. & Ferguson, S. (2008). "Quantifying the sensitivity of arctic marine mammals to climate-induced habitat change". Ecological Applications. 18 (2): S97–S125. doi: 10.1890/06-0546.1. PMID 18494365. S2CID 23765771.