Bizarre Discovery on Australian Beach Could Be a Ginormous Whale Penis

NATURE19 October 2022

ByTESSA KOUMOUNDOUROS

The mystery chunk of animal flesh that washed up on the beach. (@bootscootinaf/TikTok)

A huge, smooth, pink, severed flesh-tentacle-thing discovered on a quiet island beach in Australia has drawn speculation over what kind of animal is now missing a piece of its anatomy.

The "giant random animal part" was found and filmed by TikTok user Afri Gregory, and has since gone viral with millions of views sparking tons of speculation about whale penises.

"It is massive, look! That's my foot. It's like the size of my leg. Eeew. Disgusting!" Gregory exclaimed in the footage, taken on an island off the coast near Townsville in Queensland.

Macquarie University zoologist Vanessa Pirotta cautions that we don't actually know what the meter and a half of dismembered flesh is.

"It could be anything, from [a] juicy component of a random marine animal, [such as a] shark liver," she told Newsweek. But she does admit that it's shape, size and overall similarities do look comparable to a whale's wang.

Although cetacean skeletons have long since adapted to a life of floating through the ocean, sexual selection has held on to their pelvic bones to give their robust penis muscles something to anchor onto. This gives the marine mammals greater mastery of their penis's flailing, which in turn suggests there's some kind of reproductive advantage to having a greater degree of control.

That dexterous movement has been proposed as an explanation for at least one legendary sea serpents sighting. The crew of the 19th century sailing ship Pauline witnessed what they thought was a sea serpent attack a group of whales in 1875.

While hazy glimpses of whale penises might make for a good hypothesis, there's no reason to think all – or even any – serpent sightings are the result of whale flashings.

Nonetheless, few of us are accustomed to seeing such sights strolling along tropical beaches, so can be excused for stopping and staring.

Being the largest animal known to have existed, blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) naturally also have the most giant of penises in the animal kingdom – averaging about 2.5 to 3 meters (8 to 9.8 feet) long. But the more likely contender, if a penis is indeed what we're looking at on that beach, is a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), as they're currently in the Queensland waters to breed.

Humpback whale mating organs have long been studied by researchers to learn more about the mating habits of the large cetaceans. In 1955, examining whale testicles allowed researchers to conclude that they're seasonal breeders, and the length of a whale's penis can be used as an indicator of how sexually mature the animal is.

A male humpback whale with penis on display. (Pack et al., Aquatic Mammals, 2002)

In 2002, researchers filmed 121 hours of 630 different humpback whale pods, capturing 13 instances of whale erections. From this they concluded most penis extrusions occurred during male contests for dominance. But humpback's are baleen whales – they don't have teeth – so a rival or spurned lover could not have done such damage to a whale's erection.

This study also found lone males can extend themselves while singing for company. So, perhaps the recent discovery on the Australian beach originated from one such lonely male, who had the misfortune of doing his sexy song fatally close to a predator such as an orca.

Unless an expert goes out to examine the remains in person, however, it will remain a mystery how this giant chunk of severed ocean flesh came to be in its current resting place, or to what it actually belongs to.

"If anything, it provides an opportunity for people to learn more about whale reproduction or other juicy components of animals that might wash ashore," Pirotta told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"I can see why people are interested right around the world, but we just don't know" what the fleshy member even is, Pirotta said.

CRYPTID

Black Canada Lynx Caught on Camera For The First Time, And There's Video

NATURE20 October 2022

ByDAVID NIELD

A still from the captured footage. (Jung, Mammalia, 2022)

The smartphones in our pockets have changed our lives in a multitude of ways – not least because we always have a camera to hand to capture special occasions, strange events, and perhaps the occasional rare wildlife sighting.

On 29 August 2020, near the town of Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada, Thomas Jung – a wildlife biologist with the Government of Yukon's Department of Environment – saw a sight he knew few had ever witness before.

Luckily for us, he managed to quickly get his phone out and film it, giving the world a good look at a black-coated Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis).

The fur on these big cats is typically silvery gray in the winter, and a darker reddish brown during the summer months. The appearance of a black (or melanistic) Canadian lynx is therefore of great interest to experts.

"There are only a small number of records of coat color polymorphisms in the genus Lynx," writes Jung in his published paper.

"The adaptive significance of melanism in lynx is unknown, but the loss of camouflage when hunting during winter is likely maladaptive."

A black Canada lynx is going to have a much harder time blending in as easily when hunting prey like the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) – which, Jung speculates, might explain, likely explains why there aren't a lot of the cats with this color fur around.

Jung viewed the animal from a distance of around 50 meters (roughly 160 feet), which didn't seem too perturbed by the presence of people nearby. In the 30-second clip you can also hear a dog barking, which might be what eventually caused the big cat to slowly sneak away.

The brevity of the sighting means it hasn't been possible to run any detailed examinations of the lynx's coat color, beyond a few quick observations. Although the footage is rather shaky and pixelated, several experts have confirmed that the creature is indeed a Canada lynx.

"It had a black coat containing whitish gray guard hairs throughout, as well as whitish gray hairs in the facial ruff and the rostrum and dorsal regions," reports Jung.

Bear this in mind the next time that you're out and about with your smartphone: as well as snapping photos of the kids and the pets, you might also get the chance to record footage of an animal that's never been seen before.

While coat color doesn't usually vary much in the case of the Canada lynx, color variations in other species, including bears and wolves, can be incredibly diverse. As with the Canada lynx, it's thought that color ties into how animals hunt for food, or even provide advantages in cooling down or warming up.

Throughout the animal kingdom, camouflage and colors that blend in with the background can help in sneaking up on prey (or avoiding predators). Bright colors that stand out can help in attracting mates (or putting off predators). Sadly, color changes can also come about because of human activity too.

Keeping track of the range of colors possible in a population of mammals could have significance in predicting the way a species might react to changes in their environment.

"Indeed, with increased competition by coyotes (Canis latrans) a concern for Canada lynx encountering increasingly shallow snow as a result of climate change, the added disadvantage of lost camouflage to melanistic lynx hunting hares during winter would likely result in melanism being maladaptive," writes Jung.

The research has been published in Mammalia.