“Necropsy,” the word, was invented to distinguish between the act of examining dead humans from that of examining dead animals. An autopsy would determine the cause of death of any animal, human or not, until the early 1800s, when a French doctor proposed “necropsy” for the nonhuman. All of us still die, but now we humans are autopsied and whales necropsied. Our exams involve the same process (opened up on the table) and end goal (to determine cause of death), but we are spared, at least etymologically, the suggestion of our corpsehood.
