Gross out?

Walking along any city street, you're likely to stumble across some stinky garbage. But shoppers in Tainan, Taiwan, ran into something a lot more unexpected last January: whale intestines. After the body of a dead sperm whale exploded, blood rained on nearby cars and some of the animal's internal organs splashed onto the road. Traffic stopped for hours and clean-up crews were faced with a nasty job of mopping up the mess.

Surprisingly, exploding marine-mammal carcasses are relatively common, according to biologist Tom Pitchford of the Florida Marine Research Institute. He saw an explosion firsthand during the necropsy (examination of an animal to determine the cause of death) of a manatee in his lab. "The animal exploded and its heart flew up, hit the ceiling, and then fell on the floor," he says.

After an animal dies, bacteria begin to decompose the carcass. The bacteria feed on the animals tissue and release gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide into the body cavity. Over time, the pressure (force over an area) of the gases can build and cause the body to burst.

The sperm whale in Taiwan had died after washing up on a nearby beach a few days earlier. At a massive 17 meters (56 feet) long and 50,000 kilograms (110,200 pounds), it was the largest beached whale ever recorded in Taiwan.

When it exploded, the whale carcass was on the back of a truck headed to a National Cheng Kung University laboratory, where researchers planned to perform a necropsy. Despite losing some research material when the whale's intestines catapulted onto the street, the scientists were lucky: The heart and lungs--the focus of the necropsy--remained inside the whale's body.

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