It looked bright on the outside. But this was a real funeral.
The body was embalmed. The coffin was custom-built. Thousands attended. The whole event was broadcast nationally. And the deceased wasn’t a metaphor, not taxidermy, not a statue—it was a real, biological, decomposing racehorse weighing well over 1,000 pounds.
Which should immediately make your brain go: why?
Welcome back to *Morbid Monday*. And, fittingly, this episode found me in the most on-brand way possible.
I was at my sister’s house in Kansas, riding her horses. They’re beautiful. I love them. I call them my nieces—because obviously my brain works normally and healthily.
It was a very wholesome, very Barbie moment… and then I started thinking about death. Not in a panic way—more in a practical, “what would you even do?” way.
If a horse dies, do you bury it? Do you hold a funeral? What does that even look like?
Then my brain—because it’s my brain—went one step further: *Has anyone ever embalmed a horse?* It’s oddly specific, but also exactly the kind of thought a morbid brain would have at the worst possible time.
So I looked it up. Not only has it happened—it happened on a massive, public, absolutely unhinged scale. Because once upon a time, someone looked at a 1,000+ pound racehorse and said, “We’re embalming it.”
Houston, I’m going in.
And that’s how we got here. Just another Morbid Monday. Wo wo.
I wondered if anyone had ever embalmed a horse. Turns out yes. And now… here we are.
Does anyone else have a morbid brain like mine? Anyway—cue the intro.
Before we talk embalming—chemistry, logistics, and the “how on earth” of it all—we need to answer the most important question: **Who was Man o’ War?**
Because bodies don’t get treated like this unless they meant something.
Man o’ War (yes, *the* Man o’ War) was born in 1917 and became one of the most dominant racehorses in American history. He raced 20 times and won every single race. Not most. Not nearly all. Every. Single. One.
And he didn’t just win—he obliterated the competition, sometimes by dozens of lengths. Crowds packed racetracks just to watch him exist. Newspapers covered him like the Kim Kardashian of the early 1900s—though honestly, I feel bad even making that comparison.
He wasn’t just a successful racehorse. He became a national symbol of strength, dominance, and American pride in the early 20th century.
When he retired, he didn’t fade away. He lived at Far Away Farm in Kentucky—yes, that is the cutest name ever—where people continued to visit him like a celebrity in exile.
So when he died in 1947, it wasn’t “just” the death of an animal. For many people, it felt like the end of an era.
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Now let’s talk about the body they were dealing with—because scale matters. If you don’t know horse anatomy basics, don’t worry. I’m about to teach you.
Man o’ War was a Thoroughbred. That’s important because Thoroughbreds are tall, extremely muscular, built for explosive power, and frankly *not* built for post-mortem stability.
At the time of his death, he was estimated to weigh between roughly 1,000 and 1,200 pounds. That is hundreds and hundreds of pounds of dense muscle, a massive circulatory system, and deep tissue groups that retain heat and moisture.
From a mortuary standpoint, this is a worst-case scenario.
Large muscle mass holds heat. Heat accelerates bacterial growth. Bacteria drives decomposition. So the moment Man o’ War died, the clock started ticking—fast.
Once the decision was made that the public would view him, decomposition became the enemy.
Man o’ War died in 1947 at age 30, which is elderly for a racehorse. Importantly, this was death by natural causes—not catastrophic injury, not sudden trauma, not emergency euthanasia. That matters because when a death is expected, even loosely, decisions can be made quickly.
And in this case, the decision was clear: the public was going to see him.
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Before we go any further, we need to be crystal clear about what embalming actually is. Otherwise, the rest of this story will just sound like an objectively terrible idea.
(Which… it kind of was. But it’s a fascinating one.)
Embalming is a chemical process designed to slow decomposition. It doesn’t stop death. It doesn’t freeze time. I wish it did, but it doesn’t—it just delays the mess.
Here’s what happens: blood is drained out through the veins, and at the same time, it’s replaced with an embalming solution. And no, the solution isn’t straight concentrate—embalming fluid is mixed with water, and that mixture is what goes into the body.
The solution is injected into major arteries, and as it flows through the body, it pushes everything else out. Embalming is basically a controlled chemical takeover: in goes the preservative, out comes what decomposition would happily feast on.
You are, in effect, telling biology: “Not today.”
Which brings us to the moment someone looked at a dead horse and said, “Okay—now let’s do *this*.”
Yeehaw, cowboy. I mean… why not?
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A typical human embalming might use two to four gallons of solution for a body weighing 150 to 200 pounds. Man o’ War weighed over 1,000 pounds.
There is no chart for that. No formula. No neat little “horse” column on the embalming worksheet—just in case you wake up one day and decide to preserve a national icon that also happens to be a literal ton of muscle.
Dozens of gallons wouldn’t be surprising. And volume is only the beginning.
More body mass means more tissue to saturate. Thick muscle fights fluid penetration. Gravity hates you. Postmortem circulation isn’t helping. And remember: this is 1947.
There were no animal embalming machines. No special tools. No YouTube tutorials. This would have been human equipment—hand pumps, gravity, prayer, and an unholy amount of confidence.
Arterial access likely involved major vessels like the carotids, possibly femorals, with large openings in veins to relieve pressure. Because if you don’t drain as you inject, you’re essentially inflating the body like a balloon—and we do not want pressure to build.
If the fluid didn’t distribute evenly, decomposition wouldn’t wait politely. It would show up immediately, and it would show up in the worst places.
This wasn’t cosmetic embalming. Nobody was trying to make a 30-year-old horse look 20 again. This was “let’s see if this holds together long enough” embalming.
The goal wasn’t beauty. The goal was buying time—so the body wouldn’t betray them in front of thousands of mourners.
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I can’t stop picturing someone in 1947 standing there, staring at an 1,100-pound horse, thinking: “We’re about to find out if this is even possible.”
Because the wild part is: we don’t have the embalmer’s name. There’s no embalming report. No fluid log. Nothing.
And that absence tells us something important.
This was likely what we’d call **field embalming**. There’s no realistic scenario where Man o’ War was transported to a funeral home. No embalming table could support him. No refrigeration unit at that time could handle that scale, at least not in any practical way.
So the embalmer came to the horse—almost certainly at Far Away Farm, in or near the stall where he died, or in a barn space temporarily adapted for the procedure.
Field embalming existed in the early 20th century in certain contexts—military deaths, transportation delays, high-profile individuals. What hadn’t happened on this scale was doing it to a horse that was famous.
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After embalming, Man o’ War was placed in a custom-built solid oak coffin lined with his racing colors.
Instead of transporting him far, mourners were brought to him.
More than 2,500 people came to Far Away Farm to pay their respects. And then—because history loves absurdity—the funeral was broadcast live on NBC radio.
This wasn’t private grief. This was collective mourning. People listened from their homes as if a head of state had died.
And culturally, for many, one had.
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Now let’s address the modern question I know you’re thinking: can you embalm your dog today? Your cat? Your hamster? Your horse?
In 2026, it isn’t common. Not because people don’t love their animals, but because embalming is invasive, temporary, chemically aggressive, and designed around human funeral rituals.
It’s also expensive, especially for pets.
Modern pet aftercare usually focuses on cremation, burial, and memorialization. Man o’ War wasn’t embalmed because he was “just an animal.”
He was embalmed because he had crossed into something else: a symbol. And symbols sometimes get exceptions.
So yes—could you do it today? Technically, you could. You might have to call around to find the right funeral director willing and able to do it, but “never say never.”
Man o’ War is the most famous example of ceremonial animal embalming. But he wasn’t the only animal humans have gone to extreme lengths to preserve.
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Throughout history, animals have been preserved when they stop being “just animals” in the public imagination and become symbols.
Let’s start with the big one: **Jumbo the elephant**.
Jumbo was one of the most famous animals on Earth in the late 1800s. He lived at the London Zoo before becoming the star attraction of P.T. Barnum’s circus. His fame was so massive that his name literally became a synonym for large: *jumbo*.
When Jumbo died in 1885 after being struck by a train—yes, a train—the public reaction was intense. And people always ask: did they embalm him?
No. And this is where the mortuary distinction matters.
Jumbo wasn’t embalmed like a human or like Man o’ War. Instead, for educational purposes, his skin was preserved and mounted—taxidermy—and his skeleton was preserved separately for scientific study. His internal organs were removed entirely.
This wasn’t about temporarily slowing decomposition so people could mourn. This was about long-term preservation and display for education.
And as much as I wish there were records of some rogue embalmer saying, “Yeah, I injected forty gallons into an elephant,” that’s not what happened.
Still—someone handled an animal of that scale with 19th-century techniques and preserved it. Every time I say “tools,” I cringe, because you’re supposed to say *instruments*. I can hear an instructor in my head: “Lauren, it’s not a tool, it’s an instrument.”
I would pay money to go back in time and watch how they did it. I need a time machine immediately.
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Next: **Guy the gorilla**, because this one gets closer to what people imagine when they think “preservation.”
Guy was a western lowland gorilla at the London Zoo, beloved for his expressive face and personality. When he died in 1978, he wasn’t quietly disposed of or buried.
His body was carefully preserved and prepared for scientific and educational display, ultimately housed at the Natural History Museum in London.
But again—no embalming. This was taxidermy and anatomical preservation.
The method was different, but the motivation rhymes: Guy wasn’t preserved because he was just another zoo animal. He was preserved because people felt connected to him.
And that emotional motivation is the thread that connects these stories.
Here’s the key distinction: **taxidermy removes the internal body and creates a long-term display**, like what you’d see in a museum (or yes, the giant bear in a store display). **Embalming keeps the body intact** and chemically slows decomposition for a shorter window.
Jumbo and Guy were preserved to exist for decades as educational objects. Man o’ War was embalmed so people could mourn him *right then and there*.
That’s why Man o’ War still stands alone.
This wasn’t science. It wasn’t education. It wasn’t display. It was grief management through chemistry.
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When people hear the word “embalming,” they often imagine something theatrical or mysterious—like pressing a pause button, holding someone in place a little longer.
But embalming isn’t about making death disappear. It’s about managing decomposition long enough for the living to do what they need to do next: view, gather, ritualize, and say goodbye.
That’s why Man o’ War was embalmed. Not because he needed it. Not because it made perfect sense on paper.
But because his death wasn’t just private—it was public. Thousands of people weren’t ready for him to simply be gone.
So chemistry stepped in where biology doesn’t care.
Some people get to say they embalmed a human. Some people get to say they embalmed a president.
And somewhere in 1947, someone stood in a barn, looked at a dead racehorse, and said: “Okay. Let’s embalm a horse.”
And honestly? That decision tells you everything.
Because this story was never really about a horse. It was about grief—and refusing to rush the goodbye.
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If you like this kind of morbid deep dive, make sure you hit like, subscribe, and stick around. We do Morbid Mondays every Monday, and you don’t want to miss them.
Plus, I’d miss you if you left. You can’t leave. We’re in this together now.
And of course, at the end of every episode, you get Mango kisses—good luck for the week, positivity, love, and light. If you’re lucky, you might even get a nibble.
Anyway—say bye.
