For some reason, I find the fact that Scott took ponies with him to Antarctica completely Wild.

Not only was it ill-thought out (what would they eat?) but TWO OF THEM WERE EATEN BY KILLER WHALES.

This is how Antarctic orca were fed Siberian ponies (1/11)

For their bid to reach the South Pole, Scott had decided that ponies would be a good bet to pull the sleds after having used them on previous expeditions.

So Terra Nova sailed for Antarctica in 1910 with 65 men, 34 dogs, and 19 goddamn Siberian ponies on board. (2/11)

Now Captain Oates, pictured here with four of the ponies, thought the ponies were a monumentally bad idea.

In fact, he ended up having to pay out his own pocket for an extra two tonnes of fodder because he realised that Scott hadn't nearly enough food for the animals. (3/11)

Oates repeatedly told Scott that the ponies were a liability. The small feet and fat bodies of the animals meant that they would readily break through the surface layer of snow and the ponies would end up being trapped up to their bellies in snow and ice. Not ideal. (4/11)

But Scott was determined to use the ponies to walk alongside them.

Oates even suggested shooting the ponies and then storing the meat at the depots so that the more useful dogs would have something to eat on the way back from the South Pole. He was ignored. (5/11)

Then at one point, a group of men were camping on the pack ice with a number of the ponies, when in the middle of the night the ice began to break up.

So they began trying to corral the animals to come back with them hopping from floe to floe WHEN A POD OF ORCA APPEARED. (6/11)

The men were having to wait for floes to bump up against the one they were on before moving the ponies, but the whales had their eyes on the prize(s) and started to circle.

One of the men involved, Henry Bowers, wrote of the experience and the whales: (7/11)

"The huge black and yellow heads with sickening pig eyes only a few yards from us at times... are among the most disconcerting recollections I have of that day. The immense fins were bad enough, but when they started a perpendicular dodge they were positively beastly" (8/11)

With the whales continuing to circle, the ponies were spooked and eventually they toppled into the freezing waters. One managed to swim to safety and was hauled free by Oates and Bowers, but the others were helpless, with the orca closing in. (9/11)

So Bowers did the only thing he could think of: he took a pickaxe to the ponies still in the water.

He thought it better that they die by his hand than be eaten alive by the whales. Either way, the orca got their first - and probably only - taste of Siberian pony. (10/11)

Needless to say, the rest of the ponies did not suffer a much better fate, and Oates eventually died on the way back from being beaten to the South Pole by Amundsen, muttering the now-famous final words: I am just going outside and may be some time. (11/11)

And this is the pony that survived the killer whales!

Being fed whiskey, because of course that's exactly what early 20th-century Antarctic explorers would do.

Thanks for the tip @vicky_pearce (12/11)