In May 1988, Teddy Tucker found another strange carcass, but this time in the Mangrove Bay of Bermuda. It was soon named the Bermuda Blob. The carcass was about 8 feet long. Tucker described the carcass as "2 1/2 to 3 feet thick ... very white and fibrousÉwith five 'arms or legs,' rather like a disfigured star." (20)
It had no bones, cartilage, visible openings, or odor. It, like Octopus giganteus and the first Tasmanian globster, was very hard to cut. Fortunately, Tucker preserved specimens of the carcass. Shortly after he removed these pieces, the carcass floated back out to sea. It has not been seen since.
All of these carcasses have several things in common. All of them were "hairy" or fibrous. They were white or a similar color. If they were cut, this was very difficult. If any tissue samples were ever analyzed, they were found to be made of collagen.
However, it is impossible to imagine the drawings of the first Tasmanian globster as coming from a creature even remotely resembling an octopus. However, the drawings might not be accurate, the carcass might have decayed significantly, the carcass might not be related to the Florida specimen, or the Florida specimen might not be from an octopus, either.
The results of another study of the tissue of globsters, this time of Octopus giganteus and the Bermuda Blob, were published in 1995 by Sidney K. Pierce, Gerald N. Smith, Jr., Timothy K. Maugel, and Eugenie Clark. To study the tissue, they determined its amino acid content, and looked at it through an electron microscope. Both methods indicated that both carcasses were composed largely of collagen. Collagen fibers are banded. The banding patterns of both of the globsters were the same as that of rat tail tendon collagen. The banding pattern of Octopus giganteus collagen was identical to that of whale blubber, but very different from that of octopus collagen. However, they prepared all of these samples with different methods, and the banding patterns could have been altered.
Where the collagen fibers were located within the carcass was also important. They say, "The organization of the collagen fiber bundles in the two relic samples is typical of dermis from a number of vertebrate groups, including fish, amphibians, and reptiles ... A similar layering pattern of the collagen fibers was nowhere to be found in the octopus mantle tissue we examined here. Instead, the octopus mantle is composed mainly of a complex network of muscle fibers containing only small amounts of widely dispersed collagen fibers, as might be expected of an animal so capable of shape-changing. We found absolutely nothing in the octopus mantle morphology that was comparable to the collagen fiber arrangement in the two carcasses, nor has anything similar been reported in squid or cuttlefish mantle ... In contrast, the similarity between the layering pattern of the collagen fiber support matrix of the humpback whale blubber and the fiber pattern in the carcasses is quite obvious. In addition, unlike the octopus mantle, but very much like the Florida and Bermuda tissues, collagen fibers are the main component of the blubber." (21)
It is interesting to note that they say that blubber has a lot of collagen in it, while Mackal said that it does not have very much. Although they used different species, Pierce, Smith, Maugel, and Clark say that whale blubber is 32.6% glycine (the amino acid typical of collagen), while Mackal says that it is 14.2% glycine.
They also say that the collagen fiber diameters of both carcasses are similar to those of mammals and birds.
The Octopus giganteus has an extremely high level of proline--16.8%. This is another amino acid characteristic of collagen. However, invertebrate collagen does not have as much proline as endothermic (warm-blooded) vertebrate collagen. (For example, collagen from squids is 9.6% proline, while collagen from humans is 12.8% proline.) The proportions of various amino acids in the Bermuda Blob are characteristic of ectothermic (cold-blooded) vertebrate collagen. Pierce, Smith, Maugel, and Clark conclude that the Octopus giganteus carcass is whale blubber and that the Bermuda blob is the skin of some fish, possibly a shark. They say, "Altogether, and with profound sadness at ruining a favorite legend, we find no basis for the existence of Octopus giganteus." (22)
However, Richard Ellis points out difficulties in this explanation. It would be difficult for the entire coat of blubber on a whale to come off in one piece. (When whales would remove the blubber from a dead whale, they would peel it off in strips.) Also, no fish skin is thick enough to form anything the size of the Bermuda Blob.
It should also be said that the amino acid composition of tissue could be changed after being kept in formalin for nearly 100 years. Even for the short time that the Bermuda Blob had been in preservatives, its composition could also have been changed.
In conclusion, it can be said that we are still uncertain what the globsters really are.
for a pic go here:http://www.strangemag.com/globsters2.html#The Bermuda Blob
not a very good pic, but a pic nontheless, especially if anyone specializing in graphics modification would like to try to figure it out.
Zim Matrix660
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