Crossword Puzzle

ACROSS

5. New life 7. Pointy sea creature 10. Carnivorous sea creature 11. Nationalist 13. Democracy 14. Lentils 15. Rose 17. Survey 18. In the middle

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1. Religious 2. Representatives 3. A color 4. Marvelous sea creature 6. Panel debate 8. A direction 9. Two paths 12. Freedom 16. Option

catastrophes: climate change. Destroying habitats of smaller animals, changing and disrupting ecosystems means less food for bigger creatures. And less food means more death. It’s obvious that there are so many different factors that can lead to beachings that it’s hard work for Dr. Doom to figure out why a particular whale died. In a podcast interview with Vox.com, she said “It really is a forensics problem. We do the best job we can but sometimes it's an unsolved case. Only about 50 percent of the time, if that much, we can give you a solid answer of why that animal died and why it's stranded.“ It’s like Law & Order, but for whales.

Whether the

number of beachings on a large scale is increasing and whether that’s a good thing or not is, however, a debated topic. More whales die when populations are bigger and healthier, just because there are more of them. And more whales die when more human activity harms them. Fewer beachings might mean that we kill less of these majestic creatures, or that we have helped drive another species into extinction.

Back to blowing up bodies. Every corpse starts bloating after a while. Humans, whales, other majestic creatures on our beautiful planet. But whales are of course some of the biggest mammals on earth and with big size come big amounts of guts and organs that will often inflate the thick whale skin like a balloon. It is actually common practice to cut open beached whales to avoid obliterating innocent observers. Do not try this yourself though - in 2013, Bjarni Mikkelsen tried cutting into a whale that had washed ashore in the Faroe Islands, and it blew up in his face. He’s fine, don’t worry! And while this decomposition is quite a natural process, detonating whales with dynamite is apparently one of the ways authorities still use to get rid of beached animals. Most times, they drag them out to sea first though, where the whale guts won’t rain down on innocent bystanders.

So yeah, what have we learned? Whales sometimes die due to beaching, stranding on “our” shores like a missteered ship. When they do, they sometimes blow up and explode and their guts spill out. It’s the natural beauty of the circle of life. And as always, we humans seem unable to keep our hands out of the matter. Not only by blowing the bodies to bits afterwards but sometimes by causing cute dolphins to die in the first place. If you do encounter a dead whale on your next beach vacation, be careful of the behemoth body balloon. Don’t get too close or try to poke it, it might fire back. Call Dr. Doom instead.

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