I found this article in the Metro this morning, and as a fan of dead and/or exploding whales I thought I’d have a read. Basically a motorist snapped a photo of a lorry carrying a massive dead whale to a landfill site. It must be a slow news day because all that the piece really says is that the bloke who took the picture said it smelled awful.

They quoted the man as saying “The smell was unbelievable. I’ve worked near an abattoir and that smelled bad, but this was something else”. I mean it is a massive rotting carcass after all?

Apparently the beast had been laying dead on a beach near Seasalter on the north Kent coast for a good few days. So it was always going to be kicking up a bit. So then I put my Google hat on and found a much better story from Taiwan in 2009. They were transporting a massive whale to a lab somewhere or other to do some studies and the critter just exploded.

Whale carcasses and carcasses in general do have a tendency to explode every once in a while. Digestive gases build up, alongside bacteria’s gaseous efforts and if unchecked can burst through the abdomen wall. Do whales have abdomens? Yeah, let’s say they do.

See? The Taiwanese incident was much more impressive than the Kent one above wasn’t it? It’s the guy who can’t get to his moped through the flow of guts that I feel sorry for.

Oops. Is that a one tonne spleen under that car?

More exploding whales on next page…

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