Why don't humans squirm when their heads are cut off?

December 13, 2004 4:39 PM

Why don't humans squirm when their heads are cut off? I know chickens and pigs do, but I can't find any reference to this happening during the French Revolution or any other times that people were getting decapitated.
posted by borkingchikapa to society & culture (13 comments total)

Isn't it that we have the jugular and other big veins in our necks so lose too much blood too quickly to jerk around and stuff?
posted by amberglow at 4:41 PM on December 13, 2004

shoot, I swear that just last week someone posted a link in the blue to stories of a doctor who had made, um, arrangements with those who were soon to be guillotined. He'd have them do things like make faces, or move around, or try to talk or something after the event took place. Damn! I wish I could be more of a help...
posted by plexiwatt at 4:47 PM on December 13, 2004

Pigs have the same anatomy pretty much, so that may not be it (although smaller brain means less blood flow through the neck). My guess is humans do, but they are usually restrained for execution and hence are not able to express their dancing moves. I am pretty sure they would twitch a lot.
posted by Rumple at 4:47 PM on December 13, 2004

Plexiwatt - you may be thinking of this "research ", not sure about the metafilter connection though. Fuller gruesome text of the experiment.
posted by Rumple at 4:52 PM on December 13, 2004

My hunch is that humans do twitch and squirm a bit, but that our neurology is a little too complex to do the chicken-with-its-head-cut-off thing.
posted by Specklet at 4:58 PM on December 13, 2004

oh god rumple. that was terrible
posted by puke & cry at 5:24 PM on December 13, 2004

I think it's been posted to the blue before, but Mary Roach's book Stiffs is a good source for information about what happens to humans when they die, and why. And it's funny.

Anyway, from the "fuller gruesome text" link above, I recognized the story of Languille from Roach's book.
posted by emelenjr at 5:24 PM on December 13, 2004

Cecil Adams delivers the Straight Dope here, and especially here.
posted by fandango_matt at 5:36 PM on December 13, 2004

oh god rumple. that was terrible
When you get this from puke & cry, you know you've done well.
posted by metaculpa at 5:36 PM on December 13, 2004

Yep, the short version is: chickens have a "brain" in their ass. More neural tissue there, i've read, than is contained in their skull.
posted by reflecked at 7:10 PM on December 13, 2004

Antoine Lavosier (the "Father of Modern Chemistry") made a conscious effort to try and blink as many times as he could while/after he got his head chopped off (during the French Revolution). I believe he enlisted someone to count the blinks. Google around for information.

(I'm pretty sure this is true.)
posted by thebabelfish at 7:26 PM on December 13, 2004

I think the second Straight Dope link is even more graphic, given that the account is from an American and it occurred only 15 years ago.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:44 PM on December 13, 2004

We neurologists speak of 'spinal shock'; severe trauma to the spinal cord results in extreme flaccidity of the musculature, and this can last for a few days. It's not known what causes this or how it could be adaptive.

In my limited experience, people who are suddenly deprived of cerebral blood flow may have a few involuntary muscle spasms (convulsive syncope), but they do not retain any conscious memory of the event.
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:17 AM on December 15, 2004