Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Exploding Whale


I was flipping through the channels and stopped on a NationalGeographic show titled "The Whale that Exploded"; and of course, I gotta watch it. So the story is that in Jan. of 2004 they found a dead sperm whale on a beach in Taiwan. Researchers wanted to use its body for educational purposes so they strapped the whale onto a flatbed truck and made their way to the reseach facility.

As we all know, when an organism dies there is a build up of gases within the body. Any normal animal would be able to relese these gases but whales are built to withstand tons of underwater pressure. All the stuff that keeps pressure out also keeps internal pressure in. So it eventually exploded.

This is by no means a wimpy little nerf gun shot, this was a 50-ton carcass projecting its insides with so much power that blood and entrails could be found as far as 50 meters away. Imagine walking back to your car it find it covered in blood and mammel guts. Ew.

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