Rare whale with long, spiky teeth washes up at California beach

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A rare whale with long, spiked teeth washed up on a southern California beach.

According to Jim Serpa, a former Doheny State Beach supervisor who lives in San Clemente, Calif., the photographs he was sent of the nearly 9-foot-long fierce-looking creature confirmed his hunch -- that it was a pygmy sperm whale.

"When I saw the big bulbous head, the tiny dorsal fin way back on its back and the dagger teeth, I knew exactly what it was. It also had an odd blowhole that’s farther up than any other whale and slightly off-center," Serpa told The Orange County Register. "As I walked up to it, I knew my ID from the first photos was correct.”

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A rare pygmy sperm whale washed up at San Onofre State Beach in southern California. (Jim Serpa)

Serpa had never seen a live pygmy sperm whale before this one was discovered by a lifeguard on May 15 at San Onofre State Beach in San Diego County, Calif.

These whales tend to eat squid and use their long, pointy teeth to keep them captured as they devour them.

Pygmy sperm whales, which typically have between 20 and 32 teeth, are most endangered by entanglements from fishing lines.

“Scientists say the Pacific is super warm right now, so maybe it just came up here in a warm patch,” Serpa told the newspaper. “Or, maybe they are here more than we know, and we don’t see them because they shy away from us.”

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A rare pygmy sperm whale that washed up in southern California has peaked the interest of scientists. (Jim Serpa)

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The carcass was marked with what Serpa first theorized coud have been a bullet hole.

Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration want to take a closer look at the rare beast.

“This is a deep-diving species, and these small sharks commonly bite them and the resulting wound is a perfect circular wound that we get misidentified all the time,” Justin Viezbicke, marine mammal stranding coordinator, told The OCR. “This species is deep diving and the chances it came across someone with a gun is much lower than that of it being a shark bite.”