Check out their video about exploding craters in Siberia next after this one, whales have always fascinated me.

They're the largest creatures that we know of in the entire universe at this moment, and the blue whale in particular, is the largest organism that has ever existed, bigger than any dinosaur or any other creature that we've ever known about.

Their heart alone weighs as much as an average Toyota Corolla.

While their heartbeats can be heard from over two miles away, their tongue weighs as much as an elefant, and all together they can weigh up to 200 tons.

They truly are one of nature's most majestic creatures, but like all the rest of life on Earth, they will eventually die.

And when they do, it can create some significant problems.

Most often, when a whale of this size dies, their bodies will sink below to the bottom of the ocean.

Where will enter a new phase of life After death, the carcass becomes a bountiful source of food for sharks and fish that can last for decades, and the bones become a home for all types of different marine life.

In death, a whale's body will provide life for countless other species and become, in a way, the world's largest organ donor.

But in some other instances, the death of a whale is far less glamorous.

Sometimes they're carcass will float to the ocean surface, where, by means of the wind and currents, it will be carried away to a beach somewhere and left there.

Since thousands of whales die every year, inevitably, some will end up washing up on a random beach, and sometimes whales will beach themselves intentionally or accidentally while they're even still alive.

Every year, up to 2000 marine animals will probably beach themselves alive around the world's coastlines.

One particularly terrible instance happened on the morning of the 10th of February 2017 when researchers discovered that 416 pilot whales managed to beach themselves on the coast of the south island of New Zealand.

The following morning, another 240 pilot whales beach themselves in the same area for no clear reason, bringing the total number up to 656.

Many of them were rescued and drug back out to the sea, but over 300 didn't make it and left behind their bodies on the beach, which presented an interesting logistical problem when it came time to remove all of them.

Pilot whales are big, but they're not really gigantic, so they could generally just be drug back out to the sea or cut into smaller pieces to be disposed of.

But bigger whales, like the sperm whale, are a bit more challenging to deal with, not only because of their sheer size and weight, but also because they have a bad tendency to sometimes explode, which is the reason that dead whales can be so dangerous.

This happens because after a whale dies, gasses will begin to build up inside of the carcass as its interior organs begin to decompose.

But since whales have really thick skin and an even tougher layer of blubber beneath that, the built up gasses are difficult to be released, causing the whale carcass to appear bloated.

Heat on the beach surface and the whales own enormous body weight.

Crushing itself on the land contributes toe orifice is closing up, which makes this problem even worse.

Generally, when this happens now, marine biologists know to approach the carcass with a sharp sickle or a knife at the end of a pull that they'll use to make an incision across the whale's belly to allow some of the built up gas to escape safely.

But even still, this can still sometimes result in the whale partially blowing up anyway, like in this viral video from the Faroe Islands back just a few years ago.

Poking or disturbing the whale carcass in an unscientific manner can cause the whale to rupture even more spectacularly, though, which is why you shouldn't really mess with one.

If you ever happened to see won.

A case in point of what can go wrong with a dead whale could be observed by an incident that happened in Taiwan back in 2004.

A pretty big whale washed up on a beach here, and over 50 workers were called up to help and remove it.

They used three cranes and took over 13 hours just to load the carcass onto the back of a truck.

Once it was in place, the plan was to drive it from the beach through the city of Tainan into a wildlife reservation area where university students could study it up close.

The transportation initially went off without a hitch, but the whale suddenly ruptured while on the back of the truck, splattering blood and chunky whale guts across the surrounding shops, cars and unlucky people who probably had one of the worst days of their lives.

But an even weirder incident happened in the U.

S.

Back in 1970 a whale carcass washed up on a beach in Oregon and being in America, the local government decided that blowing it up with half a ton of dynamite was the best way to get rid of it.

The idea was that it would blow the whale apart into smaller pieces that could then be eaten up by scavengers like seagulls.

But that's not exactly what happened.

The explosion sent huge chunks of whale blubber flying through the sky that smashed cars, hit people's homes and littered people's yards.

Most of the whale chunks were too big for any scavengers to scoop up, while most of the whale carcass itself still remained intact sitting on the beach, forcing the cleanup crew to manually remove it themselves over the next few weeks by hand and with construction excavators.

So built up gas is what causes whales to sometimes explode but built up gas underground from decomposing plants can also cause hills to sometimes explode to.

To see how that happens, check out this video from Cheddar about the exploding craters of Siberia.

I just watched it, and I recommend you do to Cheddar.

Makes videos about business, technology, media and news, but without all the boring stuff.

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