We knew about RFK Jr. and his brain worm. We learned about his escapade with a dead bear cub that he found in the woods, put in his car, and dumped in Central Park as a joke. Weird. We also learned recently that he sold dope when he was a student at Harvard (The Atlantic published a story by author Kurt Andersen saying that RFK sold him cocaine and that Bobby was a heroin addict from ages 15 to 29). Last week, he teamed up with Trump, who advocated as recently as 2022 that drug dealers should be executed. Odd.

Now we learn in The New York Times that years ago, RFK Jr. sawed the head off a dead whale and brought it home. Weird!

It is a violation of longstanding federal law to collect parts from the carcass of a protected marine animal if there are still “soft tissues” attached.

It becomes political intrigue if the collector was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the severed head of a possibly protected marine mammal streamed “whale juice” down the side of the family minivan three decades ago.

On Monday, the political arm of the Center for Biological Diversity, a progressive environmental organization, called on federal authorities to investigate an episode, recounted by Mr. Kennedy’s daughter in a 2012 magazine article, in which she said Mr. Kennedy chain-sawed the head off a dead whale on a beach in Hyannis Port, Mass., bungee-corded it to their vehicle’s roof, and drove it five hours to the family home in Mount Kisco, N.Y.

“It was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick Kennedy, then 24, told Town & Country, in the article, which described Mr. Kennedy as someone who likes to study animal skulls and skeletons.

The story recently resurfaced, including in an entertainment publication, The Wrap, on Sunday and in a New York Post article on Monday.

In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees marine protection, Brett Hartl, the national political director for the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, wrote: “There are good reasons why it is illegal for any person to collect or keep parts of any endangered species.”

“Most importantly, vital research opportunities are lost when individuals scavenge a wildlife carcass and interfere with the work of scientists. This is particularly true of marine mammals, which are some of the most difficult wildlife species in the world to study….

Mr. Kennedy, he wrote, may have violated not only the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972) and the Endangered Species Act (1973) — two seminal marine conservation laws — but also the Lacey Act of 1900, a conservation law signed by President William McKinley that prohibits the transportation of illegally gathered wildlife, dead or alive, across state lines.

The whale has now joined a baby bear, at least one emu and a worm whose deaths have been intimately associated with Mr. Kennedy, the independent presidential candidate — and environmental lawyer — who last week joined forces with former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign.

Well, RFK Jr. may be a former environmental activist and a prominent conspiracy theorist, but he is not an animal rights activist!