what happens to your body? It can be buried

or cremated or donated to science,

but are those your only options? I mean,

what if I wanted to be taxidermied, like my friend here?

What if I requested to have my body stuffed and mounted in some hilarious

position, like

a permanent high five, so people could high five

my actual skin forever?

Well, it turns out to be quite complicated.

So let's begin with an easier and more flexible solution.

Cremation and ashes. Twelve

humans have walked on the Moon. But

300 humans have been buried in outer space.

With the right connections and budget you can have a portion of your

ashes launched into space. The very first space burial

occurred in 1997, when a rocket deposited the ashes

of 24 people into orbit around Earth.

In 1999, human remains were first

buried on the Moon. A lunar prospector probe dropped some scientific

instruments

and some of the cremated remains of Eugene Shoemaker,

co-discoverer of the comet Shoemaker–Levy 9.

But the first human to have their remains

leave our solar system will be

Clyde Tombaugh, the guy who discovered Pluto.

In 2006, some of his ashes were launched aboard the New Horizons probe,

which will arrive near Pluto in 2015,

take some recordings and pictures and then continue on

beyond our solar system. You don't need to get all

outer spacey to have fun with you ashes. Right here on earth

there are companies that will take carbon from your remains and expose them to

extreme heat and pressure

long enough that you wind up with a diamond

made out of you. It can be cut and polished. One woman even had it done with

the

ashes of "Meowy," her cat.

The point here is that you can be quite creative

with cremated remains. But ashes don't

look like you did when you were alive, so let's revisit

taxidermy. The shapes and combinations that animals have been taxidermied into

are quite creative. For instance, an actual

pig turned into an actual piggy bank.

A bird light fixture. A goat

that's also a bagpipe.

Doves turned into

shoes. And, of course, the guy who taxidermied his

cat into a remote-controlled quadcopter.

Taxidermy doesn't preserve

every part of your body. It is taxi

dermy - the arrangement of skin,

which is okay. I mean, taxidermy won't bother to preserve

all of your internal organs, but your skin

is your largest organ. Your skin comprises anywhere from 12 to 15 percent

of your total body weight plus it's an organ that people

see and recognize you by. But here's one of the problems.

When animals are taxidermied, their skin is removed and then mounted

on a mannequin. A shape that resembles the animal,

but is made of wood or wall and wire or foam.

That's fine for museums. But the use of a generic

mannequin can lead to an animal that looks generic.

All of the tiny, subtle, but very important features of the animals'

cartilage, fat, muscles are more difficult to recreate

after it's dead and all you have is its skin.

That's why many taxidermists hesitate

to taxidermy a person's beloved pet.

Because in order to satisfy the client, an immense amount of specificity is

required.

Even more so if you were trying to recreate a person.

So, taxidermy may not be the best way to preserve yourself

or your daddy or your mummy... Mummies.

What about them? Well, let's go back to the 19th century

and Jeremy Bentham. When he died, the philosopher requested that his body be

mummified as best as technology would allow and his body dressed up in clothes

and displayed at the University College of London. It periodically still

is, but the mummification didn't turn out perfectl, so he's really just

a skeleton dressed up in clothes and stuffed.

The head wound up looking a bit too wrinkled and the color was off

and so a wax head was made. You can check out a 3D photograph

of Jeremy Bentham online. And who could forget

the dried out mummified middle finger of Galileo?

We still have it and it's on display in Florence.

It's a great thing to visit if you want a pivotal historical figure

to flip you off. But we're looking for a way to preserve ourselves

realistically, as we appear while living.

So, let's take a look at embalming. Not

all corpses are embalmed before they're buried, but embalming

is a great technique for preserving a body,

slowing down decomposition, so it can stay above ground and

be displayed a little bit longer. Now, if

a body is embalmed really really well it can be preserved

longer than you might think. Abraham Lincoln was embalmed so well

that even though his coffin has been moved 17 times

since he was buried and the casket opened five times,

on each of those occasions, including the most recent in 1901,

people said "yeah, still looks like Lincoln."

On an even more extreme scale are the bodies of people like Mao

and Lenin, which continue to be on display

to this day. The bodies require special treatments multiple times a week.

The exact techniques and embalming fluids used to preserve Lenin

are kept secret, but they've kept him preserved for more than

80 years. Well embalmed bodies can be displayed

before being buried in more positions than just

lying down in a coffin. For instance, leaned up against a wall

or riding a motorcycle.

Wow. But embalming

doesn't last for ever, and if you try to make it last forever

be prepared to spend a lot of money and time.

One method that could be used on humans and has become popular with pets

is similar to instant coffee. Freeze-drying.

The process involves freezing the animal,

so that all of its water solidifies. And then using a partial vacuum with the

pressure so low

that the solid water instantly turns into vapor

and escapes away, leaving a much much lighter

freeze-dried pet.

Unfortunately, when it comes to preserving a human

body, as realistically as possible after death,

these methods - freeze-drying, mummification,

taxidermy, long-term embalming are either

unsatisfactory or impractical.

With the exception possibly of a slightly newer method -

plastination. It's the method used to prepare bodies for exhibits

like Body Worlds. Essentially plastination involves a specimen

soaked in a volatile solvent and then placed in a

polymer solution. In a low-pressure environment

the volatile solvent leaves the specimen and

the empty space is filled with the polymer solution.

The specimen is flexible and can be put into a pose

and then the polymer hardened by using special gases.

Human bodies that have been plastinated last a very long time,

even at room temperature. But here's the crazy thing.

It's free. You can quite easily donate your body

to the Institute for Plastination. It counts as donating your body to science.

But here's the thing: you won't necessarily have control

over what's done with your body,

because at the end of the day corpses are legally

not property. No one owns

a corpse. Because a corpse

is not legally a piece of property, no one can just

do whatever they want with it. Your options are severely

limited and even if you you specifically have requested,

say, that your body be taxidermied and all of your surviving can agree and

want it to happen,

it's very unlikely that a mortuary would allow that to happen,

and, historically, the law sides

with the mortuary. For example,

in 1994, David Eugene Russell requested that when he died

his body be skinned, his skin tanned in the leather

and that leather used to bind a book of his writings.

He wanted this to happen, as did his surviving widow.

But the mortuary refused to do it and the court sided with the mortuary. So,

even if you have a really cool idea for how your body could be

embalmed forever and displayed in a funny, weird or

bizarre way, you're not going to get permission to do so.

Plastination winds up being one of your only options, but you won't have a

lot of control over

what happens to you once plastinated.

But hold on a second. In 1998,

Anthony-Noel Kelly was arrested for stealing anatomical specimens from the

Royal College

of Surgeons. Now, he claimed that he was not guilty of theft,

because a corpse is not a piece of property. He was merely guilty

of the mistreatment of a corpse. But the judge ruled

that because these anatomical specimens had been especially prepared by

licensed and skilled workers at the college,

they had become property. So here's something really strange.

If you found a way to get your body taxidermied,

for the benefit of medical science,

in doing so you may actually become

a piece of ownable property. So, in a way,

bean taxidermied may be the best way

to allow your survivors, your loved ones, to

legally and literally have you forever.

And as always,

thanks for watching.