Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies

by Caitlin Doughty

Here’s the deal: It’s normal to be curious about death. But as people grow up, they internalize this idea that wondering about death is “morbid” or “weird.” They grow scared, and criticize other people’s interest in the topic to keep from having to confront death themselves. This is a problem. Most people in our culture are death illiterate, which makes them even more afraid.

death is hard! We love someone and then they die. It feels unfair. Sometimes death can be violent, sudden, and unbearably sad. But it’s also reality, and reality doesn’t change just because you don’t like it.

We can’t make death fun, but we can make learning about death fun. Death is science and history, art and literature. It bridges every culture and unites the whole of humanity!

The human body is used to operating under the weight of the Earth’s atmosphere, which cradles us at all times like a planet-sized anti-anxiety blanket.

In 2016, a zoo in the Gaza Strip had to be abandoned due to war and the Israeli blockade. As the animals died one by one, they mummified in the dry, hot air. Pictures from inside the ghost zoo show eerily preserved lions, tigers, hyenas, monkeys, and crocodiles.

Hundreds of years ago, across Europe, people afraid of witchcraft would seal cats inside the walls of their homes, believing they would ward off supernatural threats. Builders and contractors have been finding random cats in European walls for years.

Interestingly, livor mortis can be useful to forensic examiners determining how and where someone died.

livor mortis patches won’t be found on the parts of the body pressed up against something—the floor, for example—because the pressure means the teeny tiny vessels near the body’s surface can’t fill up with blood.

If the livor mortis is bright cherry red, that might mean the person died in the cold, or by inhaling carbon monoxide

If the livor mortis is deep purple or pink, that might mean the person suffocated, or died of heart failure.

Finally, if a person has lost a lot of blood, you might not find any...

putrefaction. This is when the famous green color of death comes into its own.

Autolysis happens when enzymes begin destroying the body’s cells from the inside.

In a corpse, this marbling is the visible sign of blood vessels decaying and hemoglobin separating from the blood. The hemoglobin stains the skin, producing delicate color schemes in shades of red, dark purple, green, and black. The hemoglobin ring breaks down into bilirubin (turning you yellow) and biliverdin (turning you green).

taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive.

There is no gray area (brain matter joke):

But would it make you feel better if I told you there are dead bodies on your flight often, you just don’t realize it? I’m talking about bodies in the cargo hold of the plane, down with your luggage. Dead people are zipping from one place to another all the time.

Aquamation uses water and potassium hydroxide to dissolve the dead body down to its skeleton. The aquamation process is better for the environment and doesn’t use natural gas, a valuable resource.

The original Body Worlds, which is a traveling show, opened in Tokyo in 1995, and began touring the United States in 2004.

The plastination of your full body can take up to a year and cost as much as fifty thousand dollars.

the partially digested pizza inside your body can give clues as to how long you were alive after eating.

solid masses of accumulated indigestible material (protect yourself by not Googling it).

The pathologist will remove your intestines (which are nearly as long as a bus),

Because he didn’t have time to digest, Ötzi’s stomach was able to teach us wildly valuable things about life and diet 5,300 years ago.

exsanguination (a cool word that means the draining of blood)

A heart kept on ice can be transplanted up to four hours after death. A liver, ten. A particularly good kidney will last twenty-four hours, and sometimes as long as seventy-two if doctors use the right equipment after surgery. This is known as the “cold ischemic time.”

Scientists believe that seeing this light at the end of the tunnel is the result of retinal ischemia, which happens when there isn’t enough blood reaching the eye. As less blood flows to the eyes, vision is reduced. Being in a state of extreme fear can also cause retinal ischemia. Both fear and decrease in oxygen are associated with dying. In this context, the extreme white tunnel vision characteristic of NDEs starts to make much more sense.

Remember, when a person dies, the bacteria in their intestines do not die with them. Not only do these gut bacteria not die, they are still hungry. Hangry.

When the body is flown home, a soldier is assigned to fly with the body and salute as the body is loaded in and out of the plane

(even if the body is just being transferred between flights). Then, there is the American flag, draped over the casket. There is a specific way of folding and draping the flag.

cats were also beloved domestic pets and were delivered to their owners’ tombs (after a natural death) as companions in the great beyond.

Cat mummies were wrapped, often painted and decorated with great care, and even given hollow bronze cases in which to spend eternity.

When you’re alive, your fingernails grow about 0.1 mm every day. “Excellent, more for me to chew on!” my gross mind thinks. (Don’t bite your nails, kids.)

Wounds you have when you die stay fresh wounds.