An exhibition that shows animals in their most stripped back form — dissected, pickled and reassembled — will open on Friday.
Featuring around 100 specimens, Animal Inside Out displays the anatomical structure of some spectacular creatures.
It includes a giraffe revealing its neck vertebrae and a goat cut open to display the foetuses inside.
There is also a lamb constructed from its own capillaries, and a horse's head that is cut into three cross sections.
The elephant took a team of 30 three years and 64,000 man-hours to complete.
The animals — which all died of natural causes — were preserved using plastination.
Georgina Bishop, the museum's exhibition developer, said: "For us this is not grisly at all.
"This is about science, anatomy, physiology.”
The exhibition opens at the Natural History Museum on April 6, 2012, and runs until September 16, 2012.
