Swollen humpback whale carcasses found off the coast of Western Australia.
Image source: mark watkins /facebook
"I'm worse off dead than alive."
Large baleen whales, such as blue whales or humpback whales,
With the decay of the internal organs and stomach contents of the corpse,
Gases such as methane and ammonia can accumulate in the corpse.
The large laryngeal sac expands like a balloon;
Its original function was to fill the seawater
and force the seawater out to filter food,
So you can withstand a lot of pressure.
The pressure in the cetaceans is rising,
Explosions are often triggered.
The carcass is first severely flattened (left) and then slowly deflated (right).
摄影：don bradshaw, ntv news
The cause of the explosion is usually not the cetacean itself, but because people climb up on the whale carcass or extract souvenirs from the whale carcass, try to move the whale carcass, or deliberately deflate the whale carcass.
In 2004, a sperm whale in Taiwan was on its way to Tainan University for scientific research when it exploded in the street, and the public recalled afterwards that "it was really disgusting!" The whole road is spewing blood and internal organs! And it stinks! A similar disgusting explosion occurred in November 2013 in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic when biologists tried to dissect two stranded sperm whales.
Swollen cetacean carcasses.
Photo by Donbradshaw, NTV News
The carcass of the blue whale, washed up by the sea in 2014 on a rocky beach in a coastal town on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, complained about the stench of the whale carcass.
Rotting whale carcasses are arguably one of the worst smells in the world, similar to the smell of lard that has been exposed to the sun for days, and that stench lingers for days.
The poem "The Whale" by the contemporary Australian poet Judith Beveridge documents the anatomy of the cetaceans, one of the world's top ten disgusting jobs:
"Grenan cut a few knives from the abdominal wall,
A terrible smell rushed out,
We cursed and turned our heads. ”
The hissing sound of the gas
It was as if a whole fleet of trucks had suddenly all braked the air brakes.
We dragged it along, toe and toe,
Pedal through the waves that rush ashore. ”
Image source: Nicole wheeler/twitter
"Soon the whale carcass began to fire cannons,
Like a big truck that explodes after a car;
Then there are maggots, white as waves, flowing out.
The strong east wind keeps pulling maggots
Blowing into our eyes and mouths,
With that terrible putrid smell. ”
※Please watch this GIF again and again to carefully understand how the staff member treated life at that time.
Source: The Daily Mail
Canadian experts are at disposal
The body weighed 170 tons at the time
It's really busy.
To ensure safety,
The anatomists are fully armed,
Finally successfully dissected the blue whale,
and make its heart into a specimen of about 200 kg,
The size is comparable to a miniature car.
The whale died on the shore,
will transform into a terrorist biological weapon,
If you die in the sea,
Maybe it's because of the predator's bite,
Creates small holes that favor the exhaust gas.
Therefore, it will not explode and will eventually sink down.
This is the "whale fall".
For example, on the migration route of gray whales,
On average per 80,000 square meters per year
At least one gray whale fell to the bottom of the sea;
Average distance between 2 whale drops
Only less than 10,000 meters.
They don't look like mysterious ghosts, but they're not dead, they're alive: in the Indian Ocean, more than 30 adult sperm whales are sleeping upright.
Photo by stephane granzotto
When the body of the whale reaches the bottom of the sea,
Will soon be found by hagfish, sleeping sharks, deep-sea crabs, etc.,
Eat more than 90% of the soft tissue,
This feast usually lasts 4-12 months.
After the large carrion eater left contentedly,
It is the turn of the small creatures of polychaetes and crustaceans to move in,
Living on food scraps for 2 years.
A sperm whale sleeps vertically with its head down.
But that's just the beginning.
When only the skeleton remains of the cetacean,
A large number of special anaerobic bacteria crawl into the depths of the whale bone,
Decompose the lipids in it,
Produce hydrogen sulfide,
Creates a sulfur-rich environment similar to the mouth of a deep-sea hot spring.
Sperm whale: Sperm whales have a large amount of fat "whale oil" on their heads, which people used as fuel and lubricating oil in the 19th century, so sperm whales were hunted in large numbers. The sperm whale in the picture was photographed in the Azores.
摄影：brian skerry, national geographic creative
Whale bones are huge and rich in lipids,
The decomposition is very slow,
A large whale can sustain such an oasis
and hundreds of species of invertebrates inside
Decades or even hundreds of years.
Humpback whales: Once overfishing caused humpback whale populations to plummet by 90 percent, and it wasn't until a ban was issued in 1966 that their populations gradually recovered.
摄影：mauricio handler, national geographic creative
Before the birth of cetaceans,
Other huge marine fish and reptiles
Partially tasked with the "Oasis Corpse",
And tens of millions of years ago the whale order arrived
Make the new life that shines in the dead more brilliant.
National Geographic Boutique Mini Program!