Let me describe the situation: You bob approach a mysterious floating object on a sunny, breezy California day. It turns out to be a huge, bloated whale corpse that is buoyant with natural gasses when you look at it more closely. You think to yourself, “This thing might blow up at any second,” as the whale starts to eject its whole internal organs in a huge, gory explosion.
Do you think you’d want to watch this? Gratitude to WTF! You can do it outside. The account confirms that the offal explosion happened on the Californian coast close to Tomales Bay by uploading the footage to YouTube. The most frequent cetaceans in the region are gray whales, blue whales, and humpback whales. However, it is unclear exactly what kind of whale is bobbing on the surface because there is just a little slice of film before its identification is obscured by a billowing torrent of blood and organs.
One YouTube viewer said, “Seeing an animal explode is not pleasant, but it is also incredibly intriguing physiologically. One way to describe it would be biologically intriguing, since the film swiftly transitions to a game of Guess The Internal Organ. After a gory thud, the dead whale’s mouth starts to spew forth everything from guts to lungs to what appears to be a spleen. You have a stronger stomach than us if any sharp-eyed zoologists out there take a moment to clarify which is which.
Tales of bursting whales have resounded around the world, and gassy explosions like this one are a normal component of decomposition for these creatures. Dead whales have bobbed their way to beaches and even the Staten Island shore with their bellies full of gas (a particularly memorable carcass for its near-spherical appearance).
They are prone to eventually give in to dramatic effect, despite their enormous mouths and huge bodily cavities’ ability to contain the death burp for a considerable amount of time. After a 60-ton sperm whale traveling to a scientific institution for a necropsy erupted on a busy roadway, residents of Tainan, Taiwan, discovered this the hard way. With one case, the whale’s entrails ruptured from its abdomen, drenching nearby businesses and residences in blood and intestines. Mixed reactions were given to the ensuing destruction; some people complained about the foul stench, while others rushed to “feel” the immensity of the whale’s penis.
Naturally, no discussion about exploding whales would be complete without mentioning the Great Whale Explosion of Oregon, 1970. Officials in Florence felt they had no option but to arrange an explosion to remove a roughly 14-meter (45-foot) sperm whale that had washed up on the beach, and the consequences were… unpleasant.
It appears that the Goldilocks Principle applies when it comes to blowing up a whale: the quantity of explosives must be just perfect. The extremes are allowed; either a small amount to kick the carcass out to sea or a large enough to utterly destroy the whale. What you don’t want is to be in the middle, which is exactly where the highway division entrusted with blowing up the Oregon whale on that fateful November day found themselves.
Witnesses who witnessed the explosion described it as “a huge blast of tomato juice” as it blew big pieces of blubber out into the air. Whale boulders went a long way before they struck houses, automobiles, and people. The people of Oregon made the amusing decision to honor their ancestry by naming a park after the horrifying incident. I suppose you should create the Exploding Whale Memorial Park when life provides you whale bits.
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