Scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) were studying a sample of seal poop in hopes of learning more about the health and diet of leopard seals.
What they did not expect to find embedded in the sample?
The sample had been collected in November 2017 from the South Island of New Zealand and had been frozen since then — so the team believed there was no way the USB stick could possibly work.
But to their surprise — they were very wrong.
The stick — despite being in seal poop for 14 months — was still in amazing condition and fully functional.
My only question is what brand is it and where can I get one because that is the most impressive thing I have heard all week.
Scientists were luckily able to recover someone’s vacation and videos from it.
They then decided to search for the person who lost said USB stick — determined to find them and return their photos as well as share the shocking story of where their stick had been for the past year and some odd months.
The NIWA posted one of the many videos that were discovered on the USB stick on Twitter — hoping that the owner of the video would eventually see it and recognize it.
“NIWA is searching for the owner of a USB stick found in the poo of a leopard seal,” the NIWA posted to Twitter. “Recognize this video? Scientists analyzing the scat of leopard seals have come across an unexpected discovery — a USB stick full of photos and still in working order!”
Interestingly enough — the video shows a group of sea lions playing in the water near the USB owner’s kayak.
As the person records the sweet encounter — they had no idea that their USB stick would eventually end up inside another animal.
And while the discovery has been a little funny to say the least — the NIWA was horrified that the leopard seal had something like that inside of him.
The goal of the NIWA’s study was to learn more about both the health as well as the diet of leopard seals — and the discovery that they had been ingesting human waste was not a fantastic sign.
The NIWA then tweeted how they may have discovered the owner of the USB stick but were not revealing their identity.
It is now believed that the person who did lose the USB stick is a woman by the name of Amanda Nally.
Nally came forward after viewing the footage from her USB stick being shared over the internet.
Nally is a resident of New Zealand and adores seals as well as sea lions — so much in fact that she works as a volunteer beach walker with the New Zealand Sea Lion Trust.
She believes she dropped the stick close to a few leopard seals one day.
She is still confused as to how it the USB stick ended up in the seal poop.
Maybe some things are better left unknown.
But I am sure of one thing — a wild and free seal is feeling a lot of relief right about now…
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