Episode 176: More Globsters and Horrible Carcasses

Strange Animals Podcast

We have more mystery animals this week, horrible carcasses that have washed ashore and are hard to identify! It's a sequel to our popular Globsters episode, episode 87. None of these are actual mysteries but they're all pretty gross and awesome. (I don't know what I did wrong with the audio but it sounds bad, sorry. I just got a new laptop and have been experimenting with improving audio, and this was obviously a failed experiment.) Further reading: The Conakry monster: https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/05/30/conakry-monster-tubercle-technology Brydes whale almost swallows a diver! https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2015/AugSept/PhotoZone/Brydes-Whales The Moore's Beach monster: https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/07/08/moores-beach-monster The Tecolutla Monster: https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/07/10/tecolutla-monster-carcass Further watching: Oregon's Exploding Whale Note: The video says it's a Pacific grey whale but other sources say it's a sperm whale. I called it a sperm whale in the episode but that may be incorrect. The Conakry monster: The Ataka carcass: A Bryde's whale hunting (left) and with its throat pleats expanded to hold more water (right): The Moore's beach monster: Baird's beaked whales in better circumstances: The Sakhalin Island woolly whale and a detail of the "fur" (decomposing connective tissue): The Tecolutla monster (yeah, kind of hard to make out details but the guy in the background has a nice hat): What not to do with a dead whale: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Remember episode 87 about globsters? Well, let’s revisit some globsters I didn’t mention in that episode, or basically just any weird dead animals that have washed ashore in various parts of the world. We’ll start with the Conakry monster, which I learned about while I was researching last week’s episode about small mystery animals. In May 2007 a huge, peculiar-looking dead animal washed ashore in Guinea in Africa. It looked like a badly decomposed alligator of enormous size, with black plates on its back that almost looked burnt. It had a long tail and legs, but it also had fur. Its mouth was huge but there were no teeth visible. If you’ve listened to the globsters episode, you can guess what this was just from the mention of fur. It’s not fur, of course, but collagen fibers, a connective tissue that’s incredibly tough and takes years, if not decades, to fully decompose. But what’s up with the burnt-looking plates on its back? Well, that’s actually not rare in decomposing whales. And it’s not even on its back; the carcass is lying on its back, so the plates are on its belly. You can even see the ventral pleats that allow it to expand its mouth as it engulfs water before sieving it out through its baleen. So yes, this is a dead baleen whale, and we even know what kind. The legs aren’t legs but flippers, and details of their shape and size immediately let whale experts identify this as a humpback whale. Another strange sea creature, referred to as the Ataka carcass, washed ashore in Egypt in January 1950 after a colossal storm that didn’t let up for 72 hours. When the storm finally abated, a huge dead animal was on the beach. It was the size of a whale and looked like one except that it had a pair of tusks that jutted out from its mouth. Witnesses said it had no eyes but they did note the presence of baleen. The baleen identified it as a whale, but what about those tusks? Well, it turns out that those are bones that were exposed by the stormy water. They’re called mandible extensions and the whale itself was identified as a Bryde’s whale. It resembles a sei whale and not a whole lot is known about it. The longest Bryde’s whale ever measured was just under 51 feet, or 15.5 meters. It’s related to blue whales and humpbacks and mostly eats sm...