“When a whale dies, it becomes a rotting feast for birds and sharks. If it ever happens to reach shore, it’ll likely be in…

“When a whale dies, it becomes a rotting feast for birds and sharks. If it ever happens to reach shore, it’ll likely be in terrible shape. Lucky for mammalogy technicians at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, a blue whale that washed up in Newfoundland in 2014 was in good enough condition that they were able to preserve its 440-pound ticker. “Its sheer size alone accelerates decomposition, so it’s remarkable we got to salvage a heart,” says Jacqueline Miller, who led the first-of-its-kind preservation effort. It recently went on display, and Miller gave us a deep dive into how to plastinate a leviathan organ.”

(via https://www.wired.com/story/how-scientists-preserved-a-440-pound-blue-whale-heart)