This Giant Sea Monster Washed On Shore And No One Knows What It Is
With giant shipworms and ghost sharks providing your regular dose of viral terror, humanity seems overdue for a brush with a gnarly sea monster. Residents of Indonesia’s Maluku province were greeted by exactly that earlier this week, as an enormous creature from the depths washed onshore, giving the internet a gross, festering mystery.
Reports have conflicted as to what the giant carcass actually is -- aside from nature's smelly and apocalyptic wrath. Several images posted to Facebook show the beast slowly rotting out, with locals surmising -- albeit not definitively -- that it's a giant squid.
Local man Patasiwa Kumbang Amalatu posted several videos from the scene, showing the creature turn the placid water a darkened red hue. He, on the other hand, notes that the beast is a decomposing whale, according to an article in Vice Indonesia.
Although the discovery of a giant squid would no doubt turn heads the world over -- they're rarely seen outside of deep waters -- an expert at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum begged to differ, telling Mashable that the carcass looks more like a relative of a humpback whale than anything else.
The rotting mystery thing is being watched by a local military unit and locals have been asked to help remove it from the area. In the meantime, it's probably worth considering whether the ocean is a metaphor for hell, and when the eternal void will devour us all like a giant beast cast from asunder.
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