Name: 我們為什麼不給人類做標本？ (Why Don't We Taxidermy Humans?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:19:59.000Z
Duration: 11 min 9 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. And when you die,

what happens to your body? It can be buried

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

a permanent high five, so people could high five

Well, it turns out to be quite complicated.

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

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

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

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

Clyde Tombaugh, the guy who discovered Pluto.

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

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

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 point here is that you can be quite creative

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

字幕列表影片播放

我們為什麼不給人類做標本？ (Why Don't We Taxidermy Humans?)

stuff

instance

extreme

property