Members of the nonprofit conservation group Bicho D’agua were stunned when they encountered a baby whale lying in the Amazon jungle, according to People .
The scientists studying the baby whale said it was about 26 feet long and is estimated to be a 1-year-old baby humpback whale.
Which makes it all the more surprising is that they found it lying among the trees in a Brazilian jungle about 50 feet from Araruna beach.
It’s unclear who exactly made the discovery of the large animal, but Bicho D’agua says it’s an incredible find that raises a number of questions they’ve been struggling to answer.
To find these answers, members of the Bicho D’agua conservation group and local members of the Municipal Secretariat of Health, Sanitation, and Environment, known as SEMMA, are performing a necropsy on the whale to gather what information they can.
According to a report by the Independent , Renata Emin, a marine specialist spearheading the research, told reporters that the going theory is the ocean threw it into the jungle.
“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.”
In addition to the confusing scenario that led to a large water mammal ending up in the ocean, there’s also the puzzle of why the baby humpback was in that area of the world to begin with.
According to Emin, humpback whales migrate south between the months of August and November and are sometimes seen off Brazil’s Bahia coast.
They don’t make the return trip north until early summer when the waters are warm enough for the calves to survive.
This makes the baby whale’s discovery several months later on Aruana beach, which is north of Bahia, very intriguing.
He concludes that the baby whale likely got separated from its mother during the migration somehow and wandered to Aruana beach on its own. Then somehow it was tossed into the jungle by high tide or large ocean waves.
The researchers will continue their study of the whale until they determine a cause of death. Afterward, they plan to leave it in the jungle to decompose naturally. Once full decomposition is complete, they’ll return to gather the skeleton where it’ll be taken to the Belem natural history museum so further studies can be done.