This article originally appeared and was published on AOL.com
Scientists and locals are baffled after a “hairy” sea creature measuring in at almost 20 feet long washed up on a shore in the Philippines this week.
Similar unidentified carcasses have been discovered on beaches in the region for years — but it’s still not entirely clear sea creature they might be.
Some locals speculate that the sea animal, known by some as a “globster,” is a new species scientists have not yet discovered, but experts remain unconvinced of the “new” finding.
The head of science and conservation for the animal charity Orca, Lucy Babey, says she’s certain the blob is the carcass of a large dead animal.
“It’s definitely a very decomposed sea creature in the later stages of decomposition,” Babey tells Newsbeat.
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“The carcass is about six meters long, but that’s obviously not the whole carcass – there’s no tail so it would have been bigger than that,” Babey says. “That would suggest that it was probably a whale.”
“They have numerous whale species in the Philippines such as the blue whale, fin whales and humpback whales as well as smaller whales such as minke whales.”
But Babey says there is a possibility that the carcass was once a manatee.
“Unfortunately with this animal it is far too decomposed to be able to get a confident identification on what animal it was,” she says.
But people are still curious as to why the creature is “hairy.”
Babey explains that the perceived hairs on the carcass are likely to be muscle fibers, as the animal’s body is in the later stages of decomposition.
“Other creatures could have sped up the decomposition process, but it looks like a normally decomposing carcass,” she says.
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