It depends on the size of the animal. For smaller whales, such as the Beaked Whales, Pygmy Sperm Whales, or most of the dolphins, you can cut it up and put it in the hole piece by piece. Lots of animals less than 800-1000 lbs we’ll transport to necropsy and cut it up for the move to the rendering plant. For whales larger than 1000 lbs, the necropsy is done wherever it is found, and then a hole can be dug and the animal cut up for easy disposal.
For the extremely large whales (in my area, that’s Sperm Whales, Grey Whales, Blue Whales, and Humpbacks) the necropsy is almost always done in place (there was one crazy incident in Taiwan recently where a large whale was transported to a lab for necropsy, and due to decompostion gases, it didn’t turn out well.) We’re talking about a necropsy where the incisions are made with chainsaws and our wonderfully tolerant veterinarian or research assistants stand literally hip-deep in whale flesh to get samples of the heart and liver tissue. When they’re done, the hole is dug (if it’s in a location where a hole can be dug,) and you need to wrap cables around the whale to pull it into the hole. Blue Whales can weigh up to 110 tons, so for this kind of operation you’ve got a couple backhoes and a bulldozer lying around. You can’t efficiently cut up this size of whale (that would be as large a problem as digging the grave and burying it,) but often the flukes and fins of the whale get in the way when you’re rolling it into the hole, so often those do get cut off.
It doesn’t really matter all that much. The intellectual demands of rearticulating a whale skeleton are not that great. We have a Bone Clone[sup]TM[/sup] Pygmy Sperm Whale skeleton that we use for education, and I’ve taught classes as young as 4th grade to put the skeleton back together in 30 minutes or less. It’s a great anatomy lesson.
Anyway, even if you bury the whale intact, digging it up 9-10 years later it will not necessarily still have an articulated skeleton. Beach sand shifts around a lot on that time scale.
Many of those items (elephant ivory, whale parts) are illegal to buy and sell under the provisions of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. We don’t want to help contribute to a market in elephant ivory or Sperm Whale scrimshaw. Every sample retained for scientific or educational use needs to be permitted through the National Marine Fisheries Service (for marine mammals in the United States.) It’s not that big a paperwork hassle - the guys from NMFS know us and what we do with the parts. It would be a much bigger deal if someone unfamiliar to them asked for a permit. These parts cannot be sold. I’m sure a similar system applies to elephant tusks, although I’m unfamiliar with the details.
Dude, hell no!!! Not even dead horses fit on those things, and we get our share of dead horses from outside the school, too!
No, I meant either the big freight-type trucks or (in the case of horses), the regular transport trucks (which are built/designed to have horses in them). A covered freight truck, as one of the last things that Zoo Atlanta would’ve liked is for the public to see some car with the zoo logo hauling a dead elephant all the way from Atlanta to Athens.
