Looks pretty darn weird to me. Before I go into what it might be, look at the following picture, and try to guess what it is:
It's a newer photo of the same creature. See the ears, the fur, and the bones of the snout? This thing has been in the water, and things in the water tend to lose their fur. When the flesh starts to go, the flesh on the bony snout is often first. What you're seeing in the photos is most likely not a 'beak', but the bones of its snout.
I have shamelessly copied my information and pictures from the blog Tetrapod Zoology, by Darren Naish.
What does he think it is? He thinks it's a raccoon.
To my ignorant eye (I'm not a zoologist after all), this looks like a pretty good explanation. Another reason why the explanation is good: he doesn't have an ignorant eye, and he is a zoologist after all.Are there other explanations? Sure. Check out www.snopes.com (a great place to see if someone is pulling your leg), and they report that William Wise, director of Stony Brook University's Living Marine Resources Institute, consulted with some other zoologists and decided it's just made up with latex.
Darren Naish disagrees, and has politely pointed out that they apparently don't know anything about raccoons.
So what is it? I don't know. It could be latex, it could be a raccoon, it could be something else, but here's what we do know. It's not a mysterious sea creature. There are too many good plausible explanations (see Occam's razor) that don't require inventing new creatures to explain it. And the circumstances are suspicious. The body was unavailable for examination, and even the skeleton has conveniently disappeared.
That's science. Science deals with truth, and real truth (not the pretend stuff commercials try to sell you) has error. The error means that you can never know with certainty. The more error, the more uncertainty. The most difficult thing about science is that sometimes it just stops, and says "without more information, we just don't know". Humans like to know, which is why they invent mysterious sea creatures, astrology, and Cold FX to fill the gaps. Scientists like to know too, but badly enough that they care whether or not the explanation is true.
With no body, and only a couple of pictures, I'm going with the people that have spent years studying animals: it's a raccoon or clever latex.
Either way, it's still very cool. I had no idea the ocean could do that to animals, and latex is awesome stuff! I'd link to a latex special effects shop, but much of it is NSFS (not safe for school). Apparently it's 'too cool'.
Cheers,
Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School
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