News A Dead Humpback Whale Just Washed Up in the Amazon Jungle and No One Knows Why Humans have been stumped by plenty of mysteries lately, like why a bunch of seismic waves have been rippling across the globe, and how in the hell Green Book won best picture at the 2019 Oscars...

Marajó Island, Brazil | Shutterstock Marajó Island, Brazil | Shutterstock

Humans have been stumped by plenty of mysteries lately, like why a bunch of seismic waves have been rippling across the globe, and how in the hell Green Bookwon best picture at the 2019 Oscars. It looks like we can also add one more head scratcher to the list now, too, because a dead humpback whale just appeared in the middle of the Amazon jungle and scientists can't figure out why. Biologists are still searching for clues after a deceased humpback whale calf was discovered laying in a thick mangrove on Brazil's Marajó Island on Friday, which is strange for many reasons, most notably because it was found a full 50 feet from the ocean, according to Newsweek. Scientists believe the young whale, which measured 26 feet from head to tail, had been there for a few days, as packs of vultures were already feasting on its carcass. Since its discovery, a team from both the local Municipal Secretariat of Health, Sanitation, and Environment and the wildlife nonprofit Bicho D'água Institute have been taking photographs and working to better understand exactly how it got there, as well as how it died, according to Motherboard.

“We believe this is a calf which may have been traveling with its mother and probably got lost or separated during the migratory cycle,” marine mammal expert Renata Emin of Bicho D'água said in an interview the Brazilian site 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." The fact that it was found so far from the beach is obviously of interest, but so is why it would have been in the vicinity of northern Brazil at this time of year in the first place, as humpbacks are typically found in warmer waters in the Southern Hemisphere in February. The researchers will conduct an autopsy in hopes of determining the cause of death, though that will take roughly 10 days to complete. Incredibly, this isn't the first time a whale has mysteriously found its way into the Amazon. Back in 2007, as both Newsweek and Motherboard point out that a minke whale was discovered alive and rescued from a sandbank a whopping 1,000 miles inland in Brazil, only to die a few days later. If it's true that this youngin' died because it got lost after being separated from its mom, it's for sure a sad turn of events, but at least the researchers were able to find it before it turned into a monster. h/tMotherboard



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