A disturbing discovery was made this week at a city park in Madrid, Spain. There, some 200 miles from the nearest coast, the body of what is believed to be a dolphin was found to have been dumped - raising questions not only about how the animal died, but how she might have been forced to live.
It's unclear how long the dolphin's corpse had been there, but by the time a man and his dogs found it on Tuesday, buried in a shallow grave near a bike path, it was in an advanced state of decomposition. Only adding to the mystery was the fact that the body had been wrapped up in chicken wire.
Police were called to the scene to scour for clues, though so far they've found more questions than answers.
Investigators are awaiting the results of a necropsy in hopes of determining the dolphin's origins, but the animal is not thought to have come from any nearby facility housing dolphins. Both the Madrid Zoo and another local zoological park say they are not missing any animals.
But, being so far from the ocean, the dolphin clearly didn't get there on her own.
One troubling theory has been put forth which hints at the seedy underworld of the illegal wildlife trade. According to Spanish newspaper La Razon, it is suspected that the dolphin may have belonged to a wealthy private owner who disposed of her body to conceal the crime.
Whatever the case may be, however, we hope the mystery surrounding this dolphin's death is solved - so that we can take a lesson from her life leading up to it.
