Beach cleaners on the Danish island of Bornholm got a shock recently, when they picked up what they initially thought could be the remains of a sea snake. That alone would have been enough to mark the day as unusual for the group, who typically pick up plastic trash and sometimes ship parts – but the reality turned out to be even weirder. What they thought was a snake turned out to be a penis.
Analysis of the find has since revealed the 1.5-meter-long (5-foot) member previously belonged to a humpback whale that washed up on the beach at Dueodde in southern Bornholm earlier this year. The lucky discoverers immediately contacted local conservation group NaturBornholm when they suspected their snake theory may be incorrect, and they confirmed the object’s identity.
“It was a different day at work,” NaturBornholm wrote in an Instagram post, in what is possibly the understatement of the year.
As the photos admirably demonstrate, the penis is somewhat… confronting. It’s no surprise, then, that whale penises have attained an almost mythological status among those who seek explanations for the many mysteries of the high seas, with various reports claiming enormous schlongs are to blame for historical sightings of sea monsters.
Before you get excited that we’ve finally unmasked Nessie, however, you should know it’s not quite as simple as that. As zoologist Dr Darren Naish explained in a thread on X, there are a couple of cases where the whale penis theory may well apply, but it by no means covers all mystery sea creature sightings, and the Loch Ness Monster is sadly not among them (she’s probably not a massive eel either).
Still, humpback whale ding-a-lings – which can top out at 3 meters (10 feet) – fall into the category of once seen, never forgotten. As the Pacific Whale Foundation explains, the animals usually keep their impressive lengths concealed within their genital slits: “Seeing the whale’s penis extrude from this slit is a rare sight,” they write.
But one research team from the nonprofit (unrelated to the recent discovery) was lucky enough to witness the unsheathing for themselves, and captured the incredible footage for posterity.
If that’s not enough dick-swinging, we’ve also recently seen the first-ever photos of two male humpbacks engaging in same-sex sexual activity off the coast of Hawai’i.
With only scant evidence from wild populations, there’s still much we don’t know about whale sex. Finding a penis – even one in isolation like this – is certainly of interest to researchers, so the team at NaturBonholm will be keeping it on ice for further study. “Now it goes in the freezer, and we’ll figure out what to do with it later,” nature guide Kenneth Nielsen told Dagens.
And for the team of beach cleaners who made the find, it’s not just the sight of it that they’ll remember – the object also reportedly carried “an overpowering odor”. Hazard of the job, we suppose.
