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Wildlife experts have stopped an autopsy on a washed-up whale in Baile Uí Chuill Strand, Ballinskelligs, Ireland, out of fears it might explode.
The dead 18.9-meter (62-foot) fin whale washed up on the beach earlier this month. Experts from the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) examined the whale, and determined it probably died a few weeks prior. The group attempted to determine the cause of death for the whale. However, when collecting samples from within it they were forced to abandon their task due to a possibly-imminent whale explosion.
"I got blubber, baleen and skin," Stranding Officer for IWDG Stephanie Levesque explained to the Irish Examiner. "I was going to attempt to get some muscle but I heard some sounds and was like, this is going to explode in my face if I go any deeper."
Whales, as you are probably aware, occasionally explode due to absurd amounts of dynamite. However, they can also explode due to buildups of gas as the massive creatures decompose.
Explosions aren't always so far away from people, with one explosion in 2004 showering a busy street in Taiwan in sperm whale guts, as it was being transported through the city of Tainan.
"Because of the natural decomposing process, a lot of gases accumulated, and when the pressure build-up was too great, the whale's belly exploded," Professor Wang Chien-ping, of the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan explained to the BBC at the time.
In 1970, chunks of whale spread far further after authorities in Oregon used far too much dynamite to move the carcass, but not quite enough dynamite to explode the animal entirely.
While the animal removal went horribly wrong, it did give us one of the strangest news reports of all time, above.
Though the cause of death of the fin whale in Ireland remains unknown, the team is hopeful that they collected enough samples from the animal to figure it out. They're easier to collect when they haven't been scattered across a beach and/or the general public.
