[Animals] 10 bizarre creatures that washed ashore in 2022

[BirSaNN]

A bunch of weird animals washed up dead across the globe in 2022. Here are our favorites.

Every year the remains of bizarre ocean creatures  wash ashore on beaches across the globe, revealing clues about the lives of some of the most elusive and mysterious creatures on Earth. And 2022 was no different. From white whales and giant squids to tiny penguins and swarms of jellyfish, here are some of our favorites.

White humpback whale

A local man in Australia stumbled across a 33-foot-long (10 meters) humpback whale corpse while kayaking past a hidden beach in Victoria state. Surprisingly, the creature's body was "pure white" and looked more like a marble statue than a dead whale. 

Despite the juvenile female’s extremely rare color, experts don't think the dead humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) had albinism — a genetic condition that stops animals from producing skin pigment —  because it had patches of dark skin. 

Instead, the young whale may have had leucism, a genetic condition similar to albinism that affects some individual cells' ability to produce pigments and can cause patchy discoloration. It is also possible that most of the whale's outer skin fell off as it decomposed on the ocean's surface, which revealed lighter skin underneath. 

Earlier this year, another possibly leucistic white humpback was spotted swimming with dolphins in New South Wales, Australia.

Read more: Extremely rare white humpback whale washes up dead on Australian beach

Half-eaten giant squid

 

One of the deep sea's most elusive and spectacular creatures, the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), astonished a group of tourists after it washed up with half-eaten tentacles on a beach in New Zealand. 

The colossal cephalopod, with a mantle measuring around 13 feet (4 m) long, was discovered on the beach at Farewell Spit, a nature reserve in the north of South Island.

Experts think the squid's half-eaten tentacles had been munched on by scavengers at the ocean's surface rather than being sustained during a deep-sea attack.

Washed-up giant squids are extremely rare, but Farewell Spit seems to be a hotspot for the beached behemoths: At least six giant squids have washed ashore there in the last 30 years.

Read more: Giant squid corpse with half-eaten tentacles stuns tourists on New Zealand beach

A whale's stomach

 

A strange, alien-like blob that washed up on a U.K. beach was probably a pile of whale guts, according to experts.

The massive stomach sacks were discovered by Cornwall resident Helen Marlow while she was walking her dog on Marazion Beach. The seaweed-covered lump appeared to be one singular object with no noticeable tears and did not give off any pungent rotting smells. "I couldn't bring myself to touch it, but I did try to move it with my boot and, as I did, it wobbled a bit like a big, fat jelly," Marlow told Live Science.

After uploading images of the mysterious object to Facebook, experts from the Cornwall Wildlife Trust's Marine Strandings Network identified the blob as a potential whale's stomach. The remains likely came from a large whale, such as a fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) or bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) that had been ripped apart by scavengers on the ocean's surface.

Read more: Weird 'alien' sacks wash up on UK beach, most likely a whale's stomach

link: https://www.livescience.com/animals-that-washed-ashore-2022