Status: Mystery
A few weeks ago the body of a beluga whale was
found far inland, 1000 miles away from the ocean, washed up on the bank of the Tanana River in Alaska. No one seems to have any clue how the thing got there. Sylvia Brunner, a researcher at the University of Alaska Museum of the North speculates that
"The whale could have died in the river last fall and frozen.... On the other hand, the whale could have entered the river this spring seeking fish heading for the ocean. After dying, it could have begun 'cooking from inside out, with all that blubber layer.'"
But given the unlikeliness of a whale traveling that far inland, researchers did consider the possibility of a hoax, though they were pretty quick to rule this out. Link Olson, a curator at the museum, noted that:
Perpetrating a hoax along a remote section of river with the body of a whale was highly unlikely... "If you were ever close to a dead marine mammal, even for a few hours, you would know why no one in their right mind would do that."
Unless it was a crazed prankster like
Porky Bickar who airlifted the thing in, just to mess with people's minds. Or, another possibility, the whale is a rare subspecies of beluga: the Upland Beluga, similar to the better known
Upland Trout, a type of fish that nest in trees and are scared of water.
Comments
There. Aren't you glad I shared?
He's white, about 15 feet long, weighs just over a ton, and answers to the name of 'Loogie'.
Definitely not European swallows. But then, the African swallow's not migratory...
http://www.gullible.info/archive.php?m=2006-04#post542
"Due to the damming of the Yangtze River in China, the freshwater umber whale (which is roughly two-thirds the size of its saltwater cousins) has been added to the endangered species list."
Though it seems the umber whale is only native to the Asian area, and given that it's freshwater, while that would explain its presence in the Alaskan river, one wouldn't think that it would be up to an ocean journey. Maybe seeking better hunting grounds now that the Yangtze is nearly fully dammed?