Lifestyle Pets Scientists are 'Baffled' After Dead Baby Humpback Whale is Discovered in Brazilian Amazon Jungle The young sea creature's carcass was discovered approximately 50 feet from the beach by biologists over the weekend By Joelle Goldstein Joelle Goldstein Joelle Goldstein is a Senior News Editor on the TV team for PEOPLE Digital. She has been with the brand since 2017, working as an intern, digital news writer and Human Interest writer-reporter before joining the TV team to help oversee and edit digital coverage. Her work has previously appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. People Editorial Guidelines Published on February 25, 2019 11:56PM EST Photo: Kohei Ueno / Bacroft Images / Barcroft Media via Getty Scientists are searching for answers after a dead humpback whale washed up on shore and was discovered in a Brazilian Amazon jungle. The oceanic mammal was found over the weekend amid the jungle’s trees and shrubberies, just 50 feet from Araruna Beach, Bicho D’água said on Instagram. According to the Brazilian nonprofit conservation group, the young whale, who is believed to have been 1-year-old, measured approximately 26 feet long, which is much smaller than a humpback’s average size. Adult male humpback whales are typically 38-42 feet long, while females tend to measure in at 40-45 feet — about the same length of an average school bus — the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary reports. “It is not an adult animal, nor as large as it seems in the pictures,” Bicho D’água wrote on Sunday in the caption of the grim photos. WARNING: PHOTOS BELOW MAY BE DISTRESSING TO SOME READERS After the discovery, a team of scientists from Bicho D’água, as well as the region’s Municipal Secretariat of Health, Sanitation, and Environment (SEMMA), were studying samples of the dead whale to investigate the situation, Fox News said. Days After 145 Stranded Whales Die, Another 50 Whales Fatally Beach Themselves in New Zealand Though it is currently unclear how the sea creature made its way to the jungle, some marine biologists developed theories that the whale had been picked up by powerful oceanic tides and carried the 50 feet from shore. Still, scientists were baffled as it is not a common time of the year to spot humpback whales in the waters. While it is likely to see the creatures swimming south on the Bahia coast of Brazil between August and November, it is not common to see them traveling as northwards as this young whale was, The Independent reported. “We’re still not sure how it landed here, but we’re guessing that the creature was floating close to the shore and the tide, which has been pretty considerable over the past few days, picked it up and threw it inland, into the mangrove,” marine specialist and Bicho D’água’s project leader Renata Emin said, according to The Independent. “Along with this astonishing feat, we are baffled as to what a humpback whale is doing on the north coast of Brazil during February because this is a very unusual occurrence,” Emin added, noting that the calf likely was separated from its mother while migrating south. RELATED VIDEO: Humpback Whale Breaches on Top of Kayakers Emin also shared with the British newspaper that it may be difficult to determine information based on the whale’s state of decomposition. Despite that, biologists were searching for specific wounds to its body to see if it had suffered trauma, such as being hit by a boat. Once a necropsy is completed to declare the cause of death, the body of the whale will be left in the jungle to naturally decompose, while the skeleton will be dismantled and preserved in a Belem natural history museum for further analysis, the outlet said.