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This strange marine find has researchers puzzled

When a TikToker took her two dogs to the beach on Magnetic Island in Queensland, Australia, she must have expected sand, sun and crystal-clear waves.

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This strange marine find has researchers puzzled

When a TikToker took her two dogs to the beach on Magnetic Island in Queensland, Australia, she must have expected sand, sun and crystal-clear waves. Then the TikToker with the username "bootscootinaf" discovered something strange.

"It's as big as my leg!", The young woman describes the washed-up object in one of several video recordings on TikTok. She puts her foot next to it for comparison. In the clip, the curious find looks elongated, light pink, and fleshy. "What is that?"

She didn't have to wait long for an answer. Within a very short time, her videos of the strange discovery were viewed several million times – probably by marine researchers, among others. "With the help of TikTok and some marine biologists, we were finally able to figure out what this weird thing is," the woman says in a new video.

According to several viewers, it is probably a whale penis, explains the Internet user. And how exactly is the whale supposed to have lost its best piece? Some TikTok users were not at a loss for a quick answer here either and gave @bootscootinaf an abstruse remote diagnosis, which she shared: Male whales would probably bite off the penis of another male quite often. The severed limbs would then be washed ashore. Brrrrrr…

That would actually settle the matter, wouldn't it? However, according to marine researcher Vanessa Pirotta, the statement is not true. There are some humpback whales in the Coral Sea - the body of water that surrounds Magnetic Island. However, it is "unlikely that a male humpback whale would cut off the penis of a conspecific." Because:

In addition, according to Pirotta, it has never been documented how one whale would have bitten off the other's penis. In order to be able to say with certainty what kind of body part it is - and from which animal - the limb has to be examined more closely.

How the supposed sex organ got to the beach in Australia remains a mystery for the time being. Interestingly, whale penises are connected to a completely different mystery: that of sea monsters.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, seafarers repeatedly reported seeing snake-like monsters in the water. In 1734, for example, the Lutheran Hans Egede spoke of a "terrible creature" such as the ship's crew had never seen before. "The monster raised its head and appeared to be larger than the crow's nest on the main mast," wrote the Dane.

About 270 years later, the zoologist Charles Paxton got to the bottom of such seafaring stories. Together with his colleagues, he compared the reports and drawings of sea monsters with photos and descriptions of...well, you know. The team came to the conclusion that instead of snake-like sea monsters, seafarers could have seen whale penises back then.

At least on the open sea. In the case of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, for example, this is unlikely - after all, no whales live in the Scottish freshwater lake. However, one thing unites the stories: from legendary seafarer sightings to viral TikTok videos, the curiosities of the sea never cease to fascinate us.

You want more sea? More weird sea creatures can be found here:

"Aha! Ten minutes of everyday knowledge" is WELT's knowledge podcast. Every Tuesday and Thursday we answer everyday questions from the field of science. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer, Amazon Music, among others, or directly via RSS feed.

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