A report published Monday in the journal Current Biology reports the spotting of two specimens of the world's rarest species of whale on a beach in New Zealand.
The spade-toothed beaked whale is said to be the world's rarest species of whales. This specie is so rare that up until Monday researches doubted it even existed. However, two specimens of this rare species of whales were seen on a beach in New Zealand.
The two whales washed up on Opape Beach in New Zealand's Bay of Plenty on New Year's Eve in 2010. Researchers first thought them to be a different kind of the Gray's beaked whales which is commonly found in New Zealand. After a DNA analysis, which is mandatory for whales that die on the shore, scientists were astonished to find that it was indeed a specimen of the spade-toothed beaked whale.
"This is pretty fantastic," said Ewan Fordyce, a geology professor at the University of Otago who specialises in the evolution of whales and who was not involved in the research. "There would be few, if any, mammalian species in the world that would be rarer. And we know much more about panda bears and other iconic, rare animals."
Researcher at the University of Auckland Rochelle Constantine said: "It may be that they are simply an offshore species that lives and dies in the deep ocean waters and only rarely wash ashore."
"New Zealand is surrounded by massive oceans. There is a lot of marine life that remains unknown to us."
Writing for the journal, Rochelle Constantine added: "This is the first time this species - a whale over five metres in length - has ever been seen as a complete specimen, and we were lucky enough to find two of them. Up until now, all we have known about the spade-toothed beaked whale was from three partial skulls collected from New Zealand and Chile over a 140-year period.
"It is remarkable that we know almost nothing about such a large mammal."
