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

by Caitlin Doughty

Plus, I’m obsessed with corpses. Not in a weird way or anything (nervous laughter).

all the questions in this book come from 100 percent ethically sourced, free-range, organic children.

STOP LOL

Mr. Cuddlesworth is a sweetheart, you say? “He watches TV with me!” No, ma’am. Mr. Cuddlesworth is a predator.

Your dog will totally eat you. “Oh no!” you say. “Not man’s best friend!” Oh yes. Fifi Fluff will attack your corpse without remorse. There are cases where forensics experts first suspect a violent murder has occurred, only to discover that the damage was Ms. Fluff attacking the dead body postmortem.

:o

More likely Fifi Fluff will be attempting to wake you up. Something has happened to her human. She’s probably anxious and tense. In this situation, a dog might nibble the lips off her owner,

:O

So far, no individual has died of natural causes in space. There have been eighteen astronaut deaths, but all were caused by a bona fide space disaster.

Hmmm interesting! I guess that makes sense though since they should be in peak physical condition when they go into space.

The prototype was called the Body Back. (“I’m bringing body back, returning corpses but they’re not intact.”)*

OMG 💀

* Kids, this is a Justin Timberlake reference, you’re fine not knowing who that is.

THIS BOOK LOL

Julia Pastrana, the nineteenth-century Mexican woman with a condition called hypertrichosis that caused hair to grow all over her face and body. After she died, her embalmed and taxidermied corpse was taken on world tour by her awful husband. He saw there was money to be made by displaying Julia in freak shows. Julia had ceased to be regarded as human;

Jaw? ON THE FLOOR.

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.

BRO WHAT THE FUCK THEY JUST LEFT THE ANIMALS?!?!?!?!?!?!

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.

THIS BOOK IS INSANE

Here is a short, but awesome, list of things that have been found preserved in amber: a roughly 20-million-year-old male scorpion dug up by a farmer in Mexico, a roughly 75-million-year-old set of dinosaur feathers found in Canada, a roughly 17-million-year-old group of anole lizards found in the Dominican Republic, and a roughly 100-million-year-old insect (now extinct) with a triangular head that could turn around 180 degrees—something no modern insect is able to do. There’s even a chunk of amber that holds a roughly 100-million-year-old spider paused in mid-attack on a wasp.