Horse Orca

All hail the mighty Horse Orca. Some would call this unbelievably strange creature a marvel of the natural world, while other, less forgiving critics (like those who work for the Village Voice or the New York Times) might label it a freakish misfit who refuses to obey accepted genre definitions, thus affronting the taxinomic sensibilities of the cognoscenti.

Still, by anyone's account, the Horse Orca is an exceptional creature. With a habitat in the deepest waters of the Southern Atlantic between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, the Horse Orca is incredibly rare. In fact, a photograph has never been taken of this creature while alive, and no living Horse Orca has ever been seen. Dead Horse Orcas do occasionally wash up on the shores of the Falkland Islands and far southerly coast of Argentina and Chile, which is the only reason scientists know they exist. In 1967, a Horse Orca corpse washed up on the beaches of Pinamar, just south of Buenos Aires. A quick thinking beach comber took the corpse to a taxidermist, and the creature was preserved. The stuffed Horse Orca was subsequently exhibited in a display at the Jardin Zoologico in Buenos Aires, but it disappeared one night in the 1970's, never to be seen again.