Why we can't help but see the whale in the forest as an omen

The dead humpback whale lying in an Amazon rainforest clearing distils our knowledge that human actions have changed the climate and polluted the oceansThere could scarcely be a sadder image of nature in chaos. A young humpback whale lies flat out in a forest clearing made by its own bulk. If it had sunk in the sea, this whale would be food for hagfish and cookiecutter sharks. Instead its yellowed, sagging blubber has been pecked at by birds. What baffling force could have thrown this giant ocean mammal into the Amazon rainforest?It's the kind of prodigious sight that previous ages would have interpreted as an omen - and we still can't resist seeing it that way. The sheer out-of-placeness of this poor juvenile stranded in death without the sea in sight is even more disconcerting than a pod of whales washed up on a beach or a lone cetacean in the Thames. It shows how the medieval cosmology of the four elements lodges in our imaginations: how has a creature of the water ended up on the earth? Or to put it in the more contemporary language of conspiracy theories: this dead sea mammal is very fishy. Perhaps it was taken by aliens to be probed, then dumped here. Maybe it was airlifted by the deep state for reasons of its own. Continue reading...