Narwhals become quieter as the Arctic Ocean grows louder
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav For most of their evolutionary history, narwhals have relied more on sound than sight to survive in the Arctic’s dark icy waters. The speckled toothed whales—sometimes referred to as “unicorns of the sea” for the long, spiral tusks that protrude from the heads of males—navigate, hunt, and communicate using echolocation. By emitting a series of calls, whistles, and high frequency clicks—as many as a thousand per second—and listening for the echoes that bounce back, they are able to locate prey hundreds to thousands of feet deep and detect narrow cracks in sea ice where they can surface…
