So, a bunch of fisherman caught this huge, 28-foot giant squid off the coast of the Falkland Island, and London’s Natural History Museum decided to put it on display. As the BBC reports, they had quite a time figuring out how to present the briny beast. It turns out it’s pretty hard to defrost a giant squid: It’s hard to time the pacing of the warm-up so the thin little tentacles don’t rot while waiting for the thick mantle to defrost.

But once the thing is de-iced, there’s an even thornier curatorial challenge: Where do you get a tank big enough — and weirdly-shaped enough — to hold a creature that is as long as a bus but thin as a human?

They called Damien Hirst, the British shock-jock artist famous for producing big icky installations of entire animals (sharks, horses) sliced like salami:

“We contacted Damien Hirst’s group after seeing their animals preserved in formalin. They put us in touch with a company who could make these tanks,” explained Mr Ablett.

The squid now resides in a glass tank, filled to the brim with preservative solution, and is one of 22 million specimens that can be seen as part of the behind-the-scenes Darwin Centre tour of the Natural History Museum.

(Thanks to Debbie Chachra and Will Hanisko for this one!)