Animal of the Week January 1, 2019 — not a giraffe

What do the Thames and Melania Trump's twitter feed have in common?

They both have an unexplained beluga whale in them.

Beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) are a an Arctic species that live in groups around the ice cap in winter but then move to estuaries and coastal waters when ice recedes in summer. Although these seasonal migrations mean that beluga whales do get about a bit, they are unexpected visitors so far south as the UK, let alone the southeast of England. Nonetheless, here we are, with a lone beluga whale pratting around near Gravesend, first identified in September, the whale was probably actually first sighted in August.

What brought the beluga whale to the Thames is a mystery, as is the 2012 tweet from Melania Trump, in which the first lady, pondered "What is she thinking?" Odd enough in itself, but then on Sunday night just gone, the tweet miraculously changed so that the photo of the whale was replaced with one of a giraffe. "WTF?!", the twittersphere thought. "Can the Trumps now edit their old tweets?" But then to further muddy the waters, the giraffe was showing up on some browsers and not on others, turns out it was some coding glitch that I won't pretend to understand. Order has been restored and the whale is back as it should be. But what is she thinking? Melania, the whale, the giraffe?

Beluga whales are part of the toothed whale family and their closest relatives are narwals. The name, beluga, comes from the Russian for "white", which is also the origin for the name of the beluga sturgeon, whence the caviar. Sturgeon and whale are no more closely related than any other mammal and fish. Known as the canary of the sea for their high-pitched vocalisations, belugas are unfortunately frequently kept in captivity, which is no place for a cetacean, but one or two captive belugas have been able to mimic human speech patters—what clever fellows.


News that a beluga whale was spotted in the Thames brought back memories of Wally the Whale, a northern bottlenose whale that found itself stranded in Vauxhall, exhausted and disoriented (god knows I know that feeling). While the newest cetacean visitor seems to be thriving, Wally was less fortunate and died (god knows I know that feeling).