Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. And when you die,
what happens to your body? It can be buried
or cremated or donated to science,
but are those your only options? I mean,
what if I wanted to be taxidermied, like my friend here?
What if I requested to have my body stuffed and mounted in some hilarious
position, like
a permanent high five, so people could high five
my actual skin forever?
Well, it turns out to be quite complicated.
So let's begin with an easier and more flexible solution.
Cremation and ashes. Twelve
humans have walked on the Moon. But
300 humans have been buried in outer space.
With the right connections and budget you can have a portion of your
ashes launched into space. The very first space burial
occurred in 1997, when a rocket deposited the ashes
of 24 people into orbit around Earth.
In 1999, human remains were first
buried on the Moon. A lunar prospector probe dropped some scientific
instruments
and some of the cremated remains of Eugene Shoemaker,
co-discoverer of the comet Shoemaker–Levy 9.
But the first human to have their remains
leave our solar system will be
Clyde Tombaugh, the guy who discovered Pluto.
In 2006, some of his ashes were launched aboard the New Horizons probe,
which will arrive near Pluto in 2015,
take some recordings and pictures and then continue on
beyond our solar system. You don't need to get all
outer spacey to have fun with you ashes. Right here on earth
there are companies that will take carbon from your remains and expose them to
extreme heat and pressure
long enough that you wind up with a diamond
made out of you. It can be cut and polished. One woman even had it done with
the
ashes of "Meowy," her cat.
The point here is that you can be quite creative
with cremated remains. But ashes don't
look like you did when you were alive, so let's revisit
taxidermy. The shapes and combinations that animals have been taxidermied into
are quite creative. For instance, an actual
pig turned into an actual piggy bank.
A bird light fixture. A goat
that's also a bagpipe.
Doves turned into
shoes. And, of course, the guy who taxidermied his
cat into a remote-controlled quadcopter.
Taxidermy doesn't preserve
every part of your body. It is taxi
dermy - the arrangement of skin,
which is okay. I mean, taxidermy won't bother to preserve
all of your internal organs, but your skin
is your largest organ. Your skin comprises anywhere from 12 to 15 percent
of your total body weight plus it's an organ that people
see and recognize you by. But here's one of the problems.
When animals are taxidermied, their skin is removed and then mounted
on a mannequin. A shape that resembles the animal,
but is made of wood or wall and wire or foam.
That's fine for museums. But the use of a generic
mannequin can lead to an animal that looks generic.
All of the tiny, subtle, but very important features of the animals'
cartilage, fat, muscles are more difficult to recreate
after it's dead and all you have is its skin.
That's why many taxidermists hesitate
to taxidermy a person's beloved pet.
Because in order to satisfy the client, an immense amount of specificity is
required.
Even more so if you were trying to recreate a person.
So, taxidermy may not be the best way to preserve yourself
or your daddy or your mummy... Mummies.
What about them? Well, let's go back to the 19th century
and Jeremy Bentham. When he died, the philosopher requested that his body be
mummified as best as technology would allow and his body dressed up in clothes
and displayed at the University College of London. It periodically still
is, but the mummification didn't turn out perfectl, so he's really just
a skeleton dressed up in clothes and stuffed.
The head wound up looking a bit too wrinkled and the color was off
and so a wax head was made. You can check out a 3D photograph
of Jeremy Bentham online. And who could forget
the dried out mummified middle finger of Galileo?
We still have it and it's on display in Florence.
It's a great thing to visit if you want a pivotal historical figure
to flip you off. But we're looking for a way to preserve ourselves
realistically, as we appear while living.
So, let's take a look at embalming. Not
all corpses are embalmed before they're buried, but embalming
is a great technique for preserving a body,
slowing down decomposition, so it can stay above ground and
be displayed a little bit longer. Now, if
a body is embalmed really really well it can be preserved
longer than you might think. Abraham Lincoln was embalmed so well
that even though his coffin has been moved 17 times
since he was buried and the casket opened five times,
on each of those occasions, including the most recent in 1901,
people said "yeah, still looks like Lincoln."
On an even more extreme scale are the bodies of people like Mao
and Lenin, which continue to be on display
to this day. The bodies require special treatments multiple times a week.
The exact techniques and embalming fluids used to preserve Lenin
are kept secret, but they've kept him preserved for more than
80 years. Well embalmed bodies can be displayed
before being buried in more positions than just
lying down in a coffin. For instance, leaned up against a wall
or riding a motorcycle.
Wow. But embalming
doesn't last for ever, and if you try to make it last forever
be prepared to spend a lot of money and time.
One method that could be used on humans and has become popular with pets
is similar to instant coffee. Freeze-drying.
The process involves freezing the animal,
so that all of its water solidifies. And then using a partial vacuum with the
pressure so low
that the solid water instantly turns into vapor
and escapes away, leaving a much much lighter
freeze-dried pet.
Unfortunately, when it comes to preserving a human
body, as realistically as possible after death,
these methods - freeze-drying, mummification,
taxidermy, long-term embalming are either
unsatisfactory or impractical.
With the exception possibly of a slightly newer method -
plastination. It's the method used to prepare bodies for exhibits
like Body Worlds. Essentially plastination involves a specimen
soaked in a volatile solvent and then placed in a
polymer solution. In a low-pressure environment
the volatile solvent leaves the specimen and
the empty space is filled with the polymer solution.
The specimen is flexible and can be put into a pose
and then the polymer hardened by using special gases.
Human bodies that have been plastinated last a very long time,
even at room temperature. But here's the crazy thing.
It's free. You can quite easily donate your body
to the Institute for Plastination. It counts as donating your body to science.
But here's the thing: you won't necessarily have control
over what's done with your body,
because at the end of the day corpses are legally
not property. No one owns
a corpse. Because a corpse
is not legally a piece of property, no one can just
do whatever they want with it. Your options are severely
limited and even if you you specifically have requested,
say, that your body be taxidermied and all of your surviving can agree and
want it to happen,
it's very unlikely that a mortuary would allow that to happen,
and, historically, the law sides
with the mortuary. For example,
in 1994, David Eugene Russell requested that when he died
his body be skinned, his skin tanned in the leather
and that leather used to bind a book of his writings.
He wanted this to happen, as did his surviving widow.
But the mortuary refused to do it and the court sided with the mortuary. So,
even if you have a really cool idea for how your body could be
embalmed forever and displayed in a funny, weird or
bizarre way, you're not going to get permission to do so.
Plastination winds up being one of your only options, but you won't have a
lot of control over
what happens to you once plastinated.
But hold on a second. In 1998,
Anthony-Noel Kelly was arrested for stealing anatomical specimens from the
Royal College
of Surgeons. Now, he claimed that he was not guilty of theft,
because a corpse is not a piece of property. He was merely guilty
of the mistreatment of a corpse. But the judge ruled
that because these anatomical specimens had been especially prepared by
licensed and skilled workers at the college,
they had become property. So here's something really strange.
If you found a way to get your body taxidermied,
for the benefit of medical science,
in doing so you may actually become
a piece of ownable property. So, in a way,
bean taxidermied may be the best way
to allow your survivors, your loved ones, to
legally and literally have you forever.
And as always,
thanks for watching.