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after this one whales have always
fascinated me they're the largest
creatures that we know of in the entire
universe at this moment and the blue
whale in particular is the largest
organism that has ever existed bigger
than any dinosaur or any other creature
that we've ever known about their heart
alone weighs as much as an average
Toyota Corolla while their heartbeats
can be heard from over two miles away
their tongue weighs as much as an
elephant and altogether they can weigh
up to 200 tonnes they truly are one of
nature's most majestic creatures but
like all the rest of life on Earth they
will eventually die and when they do it
can create some significant problems
most often when a whale of this size
dies their bodies will sink below to the
bottom of the ocean where we'll enter a
new phase of life after death the
carcass becomes a bountiful source of
food for sharks and fish that can last
for decades
and the bones become a home for all
types of different marine life in death
a whale's body will provide life for
countless other species and become in a
way the world's largest organ donor but
in some other instances the death of a
whale is far less glamorous sometimes
their carcass will float to the ocean's
surface where by means of the wind and
currents it will be carried away to a
beach somewhere and left there since
thousands of whales die every year
inevitably some will end up washing up
on a random Beach and sometimes whales
will beach themselves intentionally or
accidentally while they're even still
alive every year up to 2,000 marine
animals will probably beach themselves
alive around the world's coastlines one
particularly terrible instance happened
on the morning of the 10th of February
2017 when researchers discovered that
416 pilot whales managed to beach
themselves on the coast of the South
Island of New Zealand the following
morning another 240 pilot whales beached
themselves in the same area for no clear
reason bringing the total number up to
656 many of them were rescued and
drugged back out to the sea but over 300
didn't make it and left behind their
bodies on the beach which presented an
interesting logistical problem when it
came to
to remove all of them pilot whales are
big but they're not really gigantic so
they can generally just be drugged back
out to the sea or cut into smaller
pieces to be disposed of but bigger
whales like the sperm whale are a bit
more challenging to deal with not only
because of their sheer size and weight
but also because they have a bad
tendency to sometimes explode which is
the reason that dead whales can be so
dangerous
this happens because after a whale dies
gases will begin to build up inside of
the carcass as its interior organs begin
to decompose but since whales have
really thick skin in an even tougher
layer of blubber beneath that the
built-up gases are difficult to be
released causing the whale carcass to
appear bloated heat on the beach surface
and the whales own enormous body weight
crushing itself on the land contributes
to orifices closing up which makes this
problem even worse generally when this
happens now marine biologists know to
approach the carcass with a sharp sickle
or a knife at the end of a pulp that
they'll use to make an incision across
the whales belly to allow some of the
built-up gas to escape safely but even
still this can still sometimes result in
the whale partially blowing up anyway
like in this viral video from the Faroe
Islands back just a few years ago poking
or disturbing the whale carcass in an
unscientific manner can cause the whale
to rupture even more spectacularly
though which is why you shouldn't really
mess with one if you ever happen to see
one a case in point of what can go wrong
with a dead whale can be observed by an
incident that happened in Taiwan back in
2004 a pretty big whale washed up on a
beach here and over 50 workers were
called up to help and remove it they
used three cranes and took over 13 hours
just to load the carcass onto the back
of a truck once it was in place the plan
was to drive it from the beach through
the city of Tainan into a wildlife
reservation area where university
students could study it up close the
transportation initially went off
without a hitch but the whale suddenly
ruptured while on the back of the truck
splattering blood and chunky whale guts
across the surrounding shops cars and
unlucky people who probably had one of
the worst days of their lives but an
even weirder incident happened in the
u.s. back in 1970 a whale carcass washed
up on a beach in Oregon
and being in America the local
government decided that blowing it up
with half a ton of dynamite was the best
way to get rid of it the idea was that
it would blow the whale apart into
smaller pieces that could then be eaten
up by scavengers like seagulls but
that's not exactly what happened
the explosion sent huge chunks of whale
blubber flying through the sky that
smashed cars hit people's homes and
littered people's yards
most of the whale chunks were too big
for any scavengers to scoop up while
most of the whale carcass itself still
remained intact sitting on the beach
forcing the cleanup crew to manually
remove it themselves over the next few
weeks by hand and with construction
excavators so built up gas is what
causes whales to sometimes explode but
built up gas underground from
decomposing plants can also cause Hills
to sometimes explode too to see how that
happens check out this video from
shudder about the exploding craters of
Siberia I just watched it and I
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