Beluga whales welcome lone narwhal into their pod

Even the whales in Canada are nice, with a band of belugas adopting a lost narwhal far from home.

Narwhals live in the Arctic, but in July a team of researchers from the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM) filmed a narwhal playing with about 10 belugas in the St. Lawrence River, hundreds of miles from its normal habitat. The team believes the narwhal is a juvenile male, and even before the July spotting, he was seen with the pod four other times, starting in 2016.

Robert Michaud, GREMM's president and scientific director, told CBC News the way the belugas were interacting with the narwhal suggested he had been fully accepted into the pod, with the narwhal acting like he was "one of the boys." Martin Nweeia, a researcher from Harvard University who has spent two decades studying narwhals, said this shows the "compassion and the openness of other species to welcome another member that may not look or act the same. And maybe that's a good lesson for everyone."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up