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Animal Age

How old does a Narwhal get? (age expectancy)

What is the maximal age a Narwhal reaches?

An adult Narwhal (Monodon monoceros) usually gets as old as 40 years.

Narwhals are around 441 days in the womb of their mother. When born, they weight 80 kg (176.37 lbs) and measure 0.9 cm (0′ 1″). As a member of the Monodontidae family (genus: Monodon), their offspring is 1 babies per pregnancy. Fully grown, they reach a bodylength of 5.1 meter (16′ 9″).

As a reference: Usually, humans get as old as 100 years, with the average being around 75 years. After being carried in the belly of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks), they grow to an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″) and weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual.

A Narwhal gets as old as 40 years

The narwhal or narwhale (Monodon monoceros) is a medium-sized toothed whale that possesses a large “tusk” from a protruding canine tooth. It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia. It is one of two living species of whale in the family Monodontidae, along with the beluga whale. The narwhal males are distinguished by a long, straight, helical tusk, which is an elongated upper left canine. The narwhal was one of many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his publication Systema Naturae in 1758.Like the beluga, narwhals are medium-sized whales. For both sexes, excluding the male’s tusk, the total body size can range from 3.95 to 5.5 m (13 to 18 ft); the males are slightly larger than the females. The average weight of an adult narwhal is 800 to 1,600 kg (1,760 to 3,530 lb). At around 11 to 13 years old, the males become sexually mature; females become sexually mature at about 5 to 8 years old. Narwhals do not have a dorsal fin, and their neck vertebrae are jointed like those of most other mammals, not fused as in dolphins and most whales.Found primarily in Canadian Arctic and Greenlandic and Russian waters, the narwhal is a uniquely specialized Arctic predator. In winter, it feeds on benthic prey, mostly flatfish, under dense pack ice. During the summer, narwhals eat mostly Arctic cod and Greenland halibut, with other fish such as polar cod making up the remainder of their diet. Each year, they migrate from bays into the ocean as summer comes. In the winter, the male narwhals occasionally dive up to 1,500 m (4,920 ft) in depth, with dives lasting up to 25 minutes. Narwhals, like most toothed whales, communicate with “clicks”, “whistles”, and “knocks”.Narwhals can live up to 50 years. They are often killed by suffocation after being trapped due to the formation of sea ice. Other causes of death, specifically among young whales, are starvation and predation by orcas. As previous estimates of the world narwhal population were below 50,000, narwhals are categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Nearly Threatened. More recent estimates list higher populations (upwards of 170,000), thus lowering the status to Least Concern. Narwhals have been harvested for hundreds of years by Inuit people in northern Canada and Greenland for meat and ivory, and a regulated subsistence hunt continues.

Animals of the same family as a Narwhal

Not really brothers and sisters, but from the same biological family (Monodontidae):

Animals that reach the same age as Narwhal

With an average age of 40 years, Narwhal are in good companionship of the following animals:

Animals with the same number of babies Narwhal

The same number of babies at once (1) are born by:

Weighting as much as Narwhal

A fully grown Narwhal reaches around 938.06 kg (2068.07 lbs). So do these animals:

Animals as big as a Narwhal

Those animals grow as big as a Narwhal: