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.

To be fair, 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!

Our pets eat dead animals, just like humans eat dead animals (okay fine, not you vegetarians). Many wild animals will also scavenge a corpse. Even some of the creatures we think of as the most skilled predators—lions, wolves, bears—will happily chow down if they encounter a dead animal in their territory. Especially if they’re starving. Food is food and you’re dead. Let them enjoy their meal and go about their lives, now with a slightly macabre pedigree.

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.

Around this time, you’ll also see a color change in the person’s eyeballs. Corpses will need your help in closing their eyes. In my funeral home, we recommend families do this fairly soon after death. In as little as half an hour, the iris and pupil cloud over and turn milky because the fluid under the cornea has stagnated, like a creepy little bog. If this reminds you of a zombie, I recommend you shut the person’s eyes. This will make it look more as if the body is sleeping and less “Dad’s lifeless clouded-over eyes boring into your soul.”

Livor mortis is the first color change you’ll see in a dead body during the first several hours. But there’s a whole new fabulous bouquet of colors waiting to blossom about a day and a half after death.

Cremations for very heavy people can take longer, sometimes over two hours longer. That gives the fat enough time to burn away. But at the end of the process, you can’t tell who went in the machine a 450-pound person and who went in a 110-pound person. The flames are the great equalizer.

As a mortician, I most often encounter a surprise poo when I arrive to pick up a dead body to take it to the funeral home (this is called a “first call”). As a dead body is pulled upright, flipped over—whatever it takes to get the body safely on the stretcher—squeezing occurs, and some feces may escape the body. But don’t be embarrassed, dear corpse! Morticians are used to cleaning up poop, just like new parents are used to changing dirty diapers. It’s part of the job.

Perhaps the most famous adult conjoined twins were Chang and Eng Bunker. Originally from Siam (now called Thailand), the Bunkers were the origin of the expression “Siamese twins.”

Thus the depressing answer to the question “Do conjoined twins always die at the same time?” is “More or less, yes.” Sorry, but I don’t want to sugar-coat it. Doctors are developing new imaging technology which may help us better understand what’s going on deep inside conjoined twins. But the twins are connected in ways (physically and emotionally) that even the latest, most expensive technology will struggle to perceive. Conjoined twins are real people, with real lives and personalities.

This first two-to-three-hour period after death is known as primary relaxation. “Just relax, babe, no worries. You’re dead.” Even if you happened to be making a silly face when you died, face muscles relax along with everything else during primary relaxation. Your jaw and eyelids will fall open and your joints will get all floppy (“floppy” being the medical term). Say goodbye to your wacky face.

Rigor mortis is the Latin name for the stiffening of the muscles that starts around three hours after death (even sooner in very hot or tropical environments).

This chemical change, collectively called rigor mortis, starts around your eyelids and jaw and spreads through every muscle in the body, even the organs. Rigor mortis makes the muscles incredibly stiff. Once it sets in, that body ain’t movin’ from whatever position it is in. Funeral directors have to massage and flex the joints and muscles over and over to get them to move, a process called “breaking rigor.” This process sounds noisy, full of cracks and pops. But we’re not snapping bones; the sounds are coming from the muscles.

Unfortunately, rigor mortis eventually goes away. Every dead body is different, and the environment plays a big role in the timing, but after about seventy-two hours your muscles will go all floppy again—along with your duck-face lips.

Instantaneous rigor is exactly what it sounds like. When someone dies, they skip right over the floppy muscle relaxation stage and go straight into rigor mortis.

The Vikings, everyone’s favorite medieval Scandinavian raiders ’n’ traders, had diverse and interesting death rituals, but a flaming cremation boat wasn’t one of them. Here are a few rituals that did happen. Vikings performed cremations—on land. Sometimes the cremation pyre would be built inside stones that were outlined and stacked into the shape of a boat (which might be where this idea came from). If the dead person was especially important, their whole boat would be hauled up on land and used as a coffin, known as ship or boat burial. But no flaming-arrow cremation cruise.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan is known for documenting what he called the Rus’—the northern Germanic Viking traders. Ibn Fadlan is a problematic historical source, in part because he was a biased observer. For example, he thought the Vikings were “perfect physical specimens,” but was openly hostile about their hygiene. His chronicles mention an elaborate cremation ritual the Rus’ performed for one of their chieftains.

For the most part, animals won’t dig up human graves. There are several reasons why. First, the correct amount of soil laid on top of the body creates a scent barrier. Second, the soil not only covers up the powerful smell, but it actively works to decompose the body, leaving behind a stenchless skeleton.

Full disclosure: even if you’re buried under two to three feet of dirt, it’s still possible that animals may get a whiff of you. Every once in a while, animal tracks (like coyote) are spotted around a gravesite, as if to say, “Well well, what have we here?” But they don’t dig up the grave because it’s too much damn work.

You cannot recover from brain death. If you’re brain-dead, you’re dead. There is no gray area (brain matter joke): either you are brain dead or you are not. If you are in a coma, on the other hand, you are legally very much alive. In a coma, you still have brain function, which doctors can measure by observing electrical activity and your reactions to external stimuli. In other words, your body continues to breathe, your heart beats, etc. Even better, you can, potentially, recover from a coma and regain consciousness.

Having seen thousands of dead bodies in my career, let me tell you—dead people are very dead in a very predictable way.

If a person were to die mid-flight, that would mean a bunch of hassle and paperwork for the crew. The whole flight could even be quarantined upon landing for fear of disease. Then there’s the possibility that the police will consider the plane a potential crime scene and take it out of commission while they investigate.

Decomposition may look (and smell) disgusting, but the bacteria involved in decomposing a dead body aren’t dangerous. Not all bacteria are bad. These are friendly bacteria that don’t cause disease in living people; they just chomp away at dead ones.

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.

If you choose to donate your body and be plastinated, you’ll be preserved with formaldehyde, dissected, and dehydrated. Your fluids and your squishy parts (water and fat) get sucked out when your body is dunked in a freezing bath of acetone, which you may know as the main chemical in nail polish remover. The acetone takes the place of water and fat in your body’s cells.

Food in your stomach doesn’t stop being digested at the exact moment of death, but the process does slow down.

A trocar is a large, long needle that an embalmer will poke into your abdomen, just below your belly button. The idea is to stick it in there, puncture your lungs, stomach, and abdomen, and suck out whatever’s inside.

Humans can have abnormal proteins called prions. These proteins have lost their shape and proper function, and infect other, normal proteins. Unlike a virus or an infection, prions don’t have DNA or RNA, so they can’t be killed by heat or radiation. They’re tough little suckers that like to hang out in the brain and spinal column, spreading lesions and chaos.

So, while dermestids and other flesh-eating bugs do not usually eat bone, if they get hungry enough, they will.

Two of the best-known chemicals in dead body aroma are the aptly named putrescine and cadaverine (after “putrid” and “cadaver”). Scientists believe these foul smells are acting as necromones, that is, chemicals that trigger attraction or avoidance around dead things.

Even if you disagree with military policy, or with war in general, you can probably understand the desire of the dead soldier’s family to see the body brought home, or at least decently buried or cremated.

That’s because at a typical mortuary, the same funeral director may file the death certificate and prepare the body for a viewing. This is not the case at Dover Port Mortuary. The mortuary workers there are divided into two groups. One group handles the soldier’s personal effects and identifying information, and the other group handles the physical bodies. The idea here is that no worker should become too personally familiar with any particular dead soldier.

When the skin on your hands dehydrates after death, the nail beds pull back, revealing more nail. The nails might seem longer, but it’s not the nail growing, it’s the skin revealing additional nail that was there all along. Same principle with hair. It might look like a dead man is growing out his stubble, but that’s not real hair growth. It’s his face drying out and shrinking to reveal the stubble.