ISSUE #18: The Largest Land Animal in Antarctica

It's a bug.

In the middle of August in 1897, the Belgian scientific vessel Belgica set sail from Antwerp on a voyage to Antarctica. Commanded by Belgian naval officer Adrien de Gerlache, it was the first Belgian expedition to the continent, and hailed the start of what is now known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, during which resources and communication were scarce, and every trip was a mental and physical endurance test. 

It was also the first ship to overwinter in the antarctic. The Belgica reached Antarctica the following January and crossed into the Antarctic Circle in February. Spring in the northern hemisphere meant winter in the south, and the ship was soon stuck in pack ice, consigned to wait out the cold and the polar night in the middle of the Bellingshausen Sea—where they would stay until the ice released them a year later, in mid-March 1899. 

A number of future notables were aboard this particular voyage, two of them American Frederick Cook, who would be the first (debatably) to reach the South Pole, and Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who would be first to the North Pole. Also aboard was Romanian biologist, zoologist, and speleologist Emil Racoviţă, who was about to make a remarkable discovery.