Dead Humpback Whale Found in Amazon Jungle Baffles Scientists
Scientists are baffled by the discovery of a 26-foot-long humpback whale in the middle of the Amazon jungle, on Marajó Island in northern Brazil. The 10-ton male calf was found some 50 feet from the ocean shore, lying in the middle of a tropical mangrove where it will decompose as experts have no way of reaching it with heavy machinery.
The juvenile whale was estimated to be about a year old and is believed to have been separated from its mother during a migration, before washing up on shore in a storm. But how it landed in the middle of the thick jungle growth that far inland is still a bit of a mystery.
Scientists’ only guess is that a storm may have somehow flung the creature into the forest, though the details don’t quite add up. The animal’s carcass is relatively unscathed, and researchers are unable to reach it with bulldozers. So, how did a storm toss this behemoth of an animal that far, or push it into the jungle without leaving a clear path of destruction?
Renata Emin, project leader at the Bicho D’agua Institute, told Brazilian news publication O Liberal, “We’re still not sure how it landed here, but we’re guessing that the creature was floating close to the shore and the tide, which has been pretty considerable over the past few days, picked it up and threw it inland, into the mangrove.”
Adding to the mystery is the fact that humpback whales are almost never seen in this particular region at this time of year. According to Emin, it’s common to see them on the country’s southern coast from August through November, but rarely do they travel the hundreds of miles north to the mouth of the Amazon in February. Something strange certainly caused the not-so-little guy to get lost.
Scientists were alerted to the animal’s presence when they noticed flocking birds of prey scavenging on its carcass. And because of the animal’s peculiar and confined location they will allow it to decompose before eventually removing the bones to be displayed at a local museum.
In the past there have been bizarre meteorological phenomena that cause fish and other animals to rain from the sky during intense storms or tornadic waterspouts, though animals as large as whales have never been reported.
And while it’s more likely that a storm led to the animal being violently pushed inland, fans of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, might instantly harken back to the scene when a sperm whale is suddenly called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet, questioning the point of its existence – and body parts – as it plummets to the ground.
Maybe scientists on the ground in Brazil should also be on the lookout for a shattered bowl of petunias.
For more on the mystery of animals raining from the sky watch Out of the Blue from Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World:
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Government Admits Oumuamua Wasn't First Interstellar Object
The U.S. military confirmed the first interstellar object to hit Earth was years before Oumuamua and corroborates research done by a famous astronomer.
We’ve reported before about Oumuamua, the first interstellar object to enter our solar system in 2017, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb’s book arguing Oumuamua might be extraterrestrial. Whatever it was, its existence was remarkable as the first interstellar object to enter our solar system.
But now, we are learning that Oumuamua was the second interstellar object to enter our solar system, and this discovery was made by none other than Avi Loeb.
In 2019, Loeb, working with his student Amir Siraj, combed through the database of meteors looking for other interstellar objects. When they found evidence of a fast-moving meteor that hit the Earth, they wrote a paper arguing it was interstellar too and preceded Oumuamua by almost four years.
“The referees of the paper that we wrote rejected the paper, and argued that it should not be published,” Loeb said. “Because they don’t trust the government and perhaps the uncertainties that are often quantified in the scientific literature as ‘error bars,’ which they are just the level of uncertainty in the measurements (that) are unknown.”
