Goth tourist in Finland: Body Worlds – Animal Inside Out

Here is a tip for all darkly inclined tourists (and also residents!) in Finland: The Body Worlds – Animal Inside Out is displayed in the Finnish Science Center Heureka until 29th of October 2017.

This exhibition is about the anatomy of animals and features plastinated animal bodies. They are extremely fascinating! Though, for more sensitive people they might be a bit too much.

Before anyone gets enraged I must point out that no animal has died in order to be a part of this exhibition. The animals are donations from zoos and other places like that and the animals have died of natural causes.

I was most impressed by the entire body of a great white shark. It stood out because it was almost artistically positioned. All other specimens were featured by themselves, and often in static poses. The shark on the other hand was frozen in the middle of a hunt. It had just caught a seal.

I learned from a guide that actually this shark was not meant to be part of the exhibition. It is a replacement for another plastinated shark because this original shark was damaged in transportation. The original was the plastination of blood veins and blood filled organs, and would've looked a bit like this little pig.

The only thing I must criticize is that in the Body Worlds – Animal Inside Out exhibition the info signs next to the specimens were a bit repetitive. The same sentences featured in numerous signs which was rather annoying.

Plastination is a process of preservation in which all fat and liquids of a body are replaced with liquid plastic. The plastic gets solid after a while and then the specimen is ready. This preservation method was invented by a German medical expert and anatomist Gunther von Hagens. It aids us to study organs and for example, blood circulation, in a totally new way. In the following photo plastination helps us to examine the intestines of a goat.

In Heureka they have four other exhibitions too, not just those animals. They also have a planetarium movie theater with three science films and also rats that play basket ball. In a planetarium the film screen is a half of a huge ball, so watching a film in there is very impressive and immersive.

Their tickets might feel a bit pricey first (22 € for an adult) but when you consider how much you get with it, it is quite reasonable after all.