Scientists find evidence of a ‘narwhluga’: Rare skull stored in a museum for nearly 20 years belonged to the male hybrid offspring of a beluga whale and a narwhal
- The remarkable skull was acquired from a hunter in West Greenland in 1990
- It had long been believed to be a hybrid, but now DNA has confirmed its heritage
- Although 54% beluga and 46% narwhal, it had a diet unique from its parents’
- The animal was male and the offspring of a female narwhal and a male beluga
DNA analysis has confirmed the existence of a hybrid beluga whale and a narwhal.
The skull of the animal was first found in 1990 by a hunter in Greenland and resided in a Danish museum for almost two decades.
It is believed that, in life, the hybrid may have been grey in colour and possessed a tail like a narwhal but forward flippers like those of a beluga whale.
Researchers found that the male hybrid got 54 per cent of its genes from its beluga whale father and 46 per cent from a narwhal mother but had a unique diet.
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DNA analysis has confirmed that a unique skull (pictured) that was long thought to be the remains of a hybrid animal is indeed from the offspring of a beluga whale and a narwhal
WHAT IS A NARWHLUGA?
Scientists have confirmed the existence of a hybrid beluga whale and a narwhal.
It is believed that, in life, the hybrid may have been grey in colour and possessed a tail like a narwhal but forward flippers like those of a beluga whale.
The skull of the animal was first found in 1990 by a hunter in Greenland and resided in a Danish museum for almost two decades.
The male hybrid got 54 per cent of its genes from its beluga whale father and 46 per cent from a narwhal mother but had a unique diet.
The rare and remarkable specimen has been sitting in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, ever since it was collected from a subsistence hunter in West Greenland’s Disko Bay, back in 1990.
The skull — thought to belong to a fully grown creature due to its size and the fusion of two of its parts — was long suspected to be a hybrid between a beluga, or white, whale and a narwhal, two species which are closely related.
To find out for sure, Mikkel Skovrind and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and Trent University in Canada extracted DNA from the skull’s teeth for analysis.
They compared this DNA with the genomes of eight live beluga whales and eight live narwhals that live in the same area in which the skull was originally found.
The researchers found that the hybrid was 54 per cent beluga whale and 46 per cent narwhal, and the first-generation offspring of the two parent species.
By comparing the number of X chromosomes to the number of autosomes, or non-sex chromosomes, in the hybrid’s DNA — which is a common method for sexing an individual — the team found that the hybrid was a male.
By studying the skull’s mitochondrial genome which is inherited from its mother, the researchers were also able to determine that it was a female narwhal that mated with a male beluga whale.
Researchers found that the the male hybrid got 54 per cent of its genes from its beluga whale father and 46 per cent from a narwhal mother but had a unique diet. Pictured, the skull of a narwhal, showing part of its iconic tusk
It is believed that, in life, the hybrid may have been grey in colour and possessed a tail like a narwhal but forward flippers like those of a beluga whale, a skull of which is pictured
Although the skull represents the only collected evidence for hybridisation between the two related species, the hunter who caught the hybrid animal reported harvesting two other similar creatures at the same time.
Unfortunately, nothing remains of these two animals to study — however, the hunter had reported at the time that both had an evenly grey colouration, a tail shaped like a narwhal’s but front flippers that resembled those of a beluga whale.
The hunting of beluga whales in small numbers was still permitted by the 1986 International Moratorium on Commercial Whaling, while iconically-tusked narwhals could be legally killed despite their import to the US have been banned since 1972.
Experts compared the rare skull’s DNA with the genomes of eight live beluga whales (top, artist’s impression) and eight live narwhals (bottom) that live in the same area in which the skull was originally found
Alongside their genetic analyses, the researchers also looked into the diet of the beluga–narwhal hybrid.
To do this, they studied both carbon and nitrogen isotopes from within the hybrid skull’s bone collagen, comparing this with similar analyses from a 18 beluga whale and 18 narwhal skulls.
The relative concentrations of the carbon isotopes suggest that the hybrid animal had a different diet to both of its parents, and likely foraged closer to the bottom of the seafloor than is typical for both belugas and narwhals
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
WHAT IS THE ‘WHOLPHIN’ HYBRID FOUND NEAR HAWAII?
Scientists found a hybrid between a melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin in the ocean off the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2017.
The cross appears to be the first instance of a wild-born hybrid between the two species.
Scientists say the animal likely came to be when a melon-headed whale was separated from its group and ending up traveling with rough-toothed dolphins.
Experts don’t know how old it is but believe it’s close to adult age.
News of the hybrid animal hit headlines across the globe when a paper describing the find was published in July 2018.
Manyoutlets described the creature as a ‘wholphin’.
But scientists behind the study say this is misleading, as the melon-headed whale is technically a type of dolphin.
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