Scientists Record Rarely Heard Sounds Made by Narwhals - Gizmodo

This partly explains why scientists have struggled to capture the various sounds made by narwhals.

Departing from the village of Qaanaaq, the whalers were able to get very close to the narwhals, as the scientists explained in the paper:.

In addition to social calls, which sounded like pulsed-tones and whistles, the researchers were able to identify narwhal foraging sounds, namely their echolocation clicks.

Like dolphins, narwhals increase the frequency of their clicks as they get closer to their prey, culminating in a “terminal buzz” which sounds more like a drone than a series of discrete clicks.

As the new research also points out, narwhals get closer to encroaching glaciers than presumed, sometimes as close as 1 kilometer away (0.6 miles).

Some narwhal sounds, like previously undocumented double-clicks, could not be tied to a behavior and were possibly acoustic artifacts