Stranded, Rarely Seen Beaked Whale Has Strange Fang

The whale, identified as a Hector's beaked whale (Mesoplodon hectori), was found south of Adelaide on Waitpinga beach in February. For the past 25 years, the South Australian Museum has done necropsies (an animal autopsy) on "as many [stranded] whales as it can from its shores," but the museum's researchers didn't expect to find anything unusual when they examined this particular whale — a female juvenile, said Catherine Kemper, a senior research scientist in mammals at the South Australia