Scientists to learn more about world's 'rarest whale'

The spade-toothed whale was found on New Zealand's South Island earlier this year

Scientists are beginning to study an incredibly rare whale that washed up on the shores of New Zealand earlier this year.

They're very hard to find, and next to nothing is known about them, so the team wants to use the opportunity to find out more about how they live.

It's called a spade-tooth whale, and this is only the seventh to have been reported since the the 1800s.

All of them except one have been recorded in seas around New Zealand.

The whale had unfortunately died when locals found it, but the scientists studying it hope they'll be able to find out lots more about them to help them in the future

In July 2024, the 5-metre-long male washed up on a beach in Otago, a town in New Zealand's South Island.

Scientists had only ever been able to study parts of the ocean mammal before, but now they can examine a whole one for the first time.

And a team of scientists from around the world and local Māori people have come together at the Invermay Agresearch Centre in Mosgiel to do just that.

Whales are sacred to the Māori people, who are indigenous to New Zealand, meaning they're the earliest people to have lived there.

Whales are called tohorā in Māori language

Anton van Helden, a science adviser at the department of conservation and a global expert on the spade-toothed whale, said: "We’re working around a dead animal, but it’s telling us about how it [lived]."

The examination will take about five days, and will be focused on figuring out how the beaked whale lives while swimming in the sea, for example, where it goes and what it eats.

But they also want to figure out how they can protect the species in the future: "The findings of the dissection may have implications for how we manage the human threats these species face in their environment", Mr van Helen explained.

It's thought the spade-toothed whales look for food deep on the ocean floor

Spade-toothed whales have never been spotted alive before, and until 2012, when two other specimens were found on a different New Zealand beach, people were unsure as to whether they actually existed.

They're believed to be deep-sea divers, spending most of their time on the ocean floor hunting for tiny fish and squid.

The species was first identified from some bone fragments found in the 1870s and later in the 1950s.