Southern Narwhal | |
---|---|
Sightings | 1615-1892 |
Average Lenght | 3 m |
Average Weight | Unknown |
Diet | Carnivorous (presumed) |
Sapience Level | Non-Sapient (presumed) |
Seen in | South Atlantic Ocean |
Habitat | Sea |
The Southern Narwhal or Sea Unicorn is a tusked ceatacean, reported from South Atlantic Ocean and Antarctic waters. Whale with a long tusk.
Sightings[]
1615[]
On October 5, 1615, Dutch explorer Willem Corneliszoon Schouten noted in his journal that one of his ships was rammed by a sea monster in the mid-Atlantic. The crew later found a foot-long horn stuck in the prow.
1620[]
On February 3, 1620, Augustin de Beaulieu observed a dark-blue, porpoiselike animal with a high fin and a tusk about 1–2 feet long in the South Atlantic Ocean off South Africa.
1892[]
On December 17, 1892, the crew of the ship Balaena spotted a narwhal-like animal in the Bransfield Strait off the Antarctic Peninsula.
Possible explanations[]
- A Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) sword looks like a tusk or horn, but the swordfish is tropical.
- An unrecognized variety of Narwhal (Monodon monoceros) that lives in Antarctic waters. Narwhals are known only from above the Arctic Circle.
- A surviving Double-tusked whale (Odobenocetops peruvianus), known from a single skull found in 1993 in southern Peru that dates from the Pliocene, 5 million years ago. Its tusks, however, pointed downward, walrus-fashion.