June 1, 2016 • 58 mins
Don't run away! True enough, this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind considers a most repellent sexual atrocity, but there's more to necrophilia than the sexual abuse of human corpses. Join Robert and Christian as they discuss necrophilia in the animal kingdom, including one rare case of "functional necrophilia" that actually produces offspring. Stay for the later half of the episode and you'll also plunge the psychological depths of human necrophilia in all its varied forms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop works
dot com. Hey, you wasn't to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. So
this is gonna be a repeat episode, but we wanted
to give you a little bit of an introduction to it.
This is from about a year ago when Robert and
(00:24):
I did an episode on the science of necrophilia, and
I'm going to just throw it out there, this is
one of my favorite episodes that we've ever recorded. Yeah,
this one is a really fun topic to research. I
thought that the episode came together perfectly and we we
were were able to demystify the topic takes something that
is often seen is just you know, utterly repellent. You
(00:45):
just you don't even want to look closer. Maybe you
maybe you do, but in a gruesome car exc But
but when you strip away the human complexities that the
actual science is really fascinating as well. Yeah, and I
just you know, want to know, we talked about this
up front in the episode. I believe, but don't don't
think that this is going to be some like gross
out fest or anything like that. We approach this the
way we do all of our other episodes with a
(01:05):
lot of research, and uh, with a modicum of dignity,
I guess is what I would say, the same monicum
of dignity that we we we dust off for every episode.
Yeah yeah, but like organic food. Yeah exactly. So without
further ado, let's jump into it, all right, So we're
(01:26):
gonna start off by just by discussing necrophilia in in
the animal kingdom. I mean generally, that's the way it
goes with these things. We can talk about a simpler
model of what's going on with the animals before we
dare throw in the complications of the human mind and
human culture. And what I was the most shocked about
with this as we did the research was how prevalent
(01:47):
it is. I mean, We've got at least what like
five or six examples of different animals h that practice
necrophilia today, and I'm sure there are dozens more out
there that have just not been cataloged. And because we'll
find with the penguin, it was and then that research
was redacted basically for cultural reasons. It was just too
(02:07):
shocking to share. I mean, but essentially you can sum
it all up in a bumper sticker like, necrophilia happens,
and yes, and the more you you just sort of
acclimatized to that reality, the easier going everything else. Is
that it's not something that is not necessarily an act
that is just a defilement before the gods, as much
as a thing that occurs in the natural order of things,
(02:31):
and often as an accident. But accidents happen, and uh,
and then human culture just makes it a little more complicated.
You know. What just occurred to me, Robert, is that
we're assuming that our audience automatically knows what necrophilia is.
That's true. Yeah, so maybe we should just, i mean
throw out a very basic definition which is in fact,
(02:53):
and this was one of the things that surprised me
doing the research. In the case of necrophilia, it is
not the act of having sex with a dead body,
with a corpse. It is the desire to right, Yeah,
just the desire to alone. The fantasy of necrophilia is
enough to classify one as a necrophilia um, and the
term itself is actually pretty new. Necrophilia is an entirely
(03:15):
nineteenth century term, but of course the practice it describes
the sexual abuse of courses it's quite ancient myths going
back as far as human memory, probably because it you know,
it gets down to a lot of the key problems
with dealing of death. Um. But of course you have
to sort of define what is sex too before we write,
(03:37):
because of course, human intercourse is essentially the physical act
that allows the exchange of genetic information to mix everything
around and create a new organism as offspring. Right. Yeah,
And that's what makes our first example in sort of
the quote unquote animal world interesting because it's so alien
to how we understand intercourse. It almost seems like it
(04:01):
wouldn't be categorized as necrophilia technically, but it's referred to
as such in the literature, right, And I'm sure in
the science headlines I didn't. I mean, maybe not yet,
But it's just waiting for the right paper to come
out and then all the various science blogs will really
run with the headline that will include the phrase bacterial necrophilia. Um.
Of course, bacteria they don't actually need to engage in
(04:25):
intercourse in order to reproduce. Instead, they tend to swallow
up DNA from other bacteria just as they move around,
and they'll even absorb it from dead bacterial cells, they
exchange new DNA fragments from the dead with their own,
and then by shuffling all this around, they're essentially mating
with the dead, uh, in a way that most higher
(04:46):
creatures fail to achieve. Yeah. The stuff that I read
about this, in particular, I'm going to be honest, was
so dense that I had a hard time understanding it.
It seems like it's its own very special niche field, uh,
that that has its own language, and that I don't
know necessarily that they're using necrofile or necrophilia sort of
(05:09):
in the same way that we understand it when we're
applying it, certainly to human beings but also to other animals.
But it is how it is described in the literature. Yeah,
it is a genetic exchange between the living and the dead. Um. So, yeah,
it's almost its own thing because it doesn't really match
up with most of the models of of biological higher
organism necrophilia, but it's important to include here, especially I
(05:32):
think it's a it's perfect to include at the top,
But if you want to move on, we can get
into what what Robert has coined here as the duck
of death. And I'm sure, a lot of people are
familiar with this one from the Ignoble Prizes, particularly the
the Ignoble Prize for Biology in two thousand three. Now,
just to rehash, uh, the Ignoble Prizes, this comes out,
(05:54):
These come out every year. This was new to me
and you explained it to me before the podcast. Yeah, it's, uh,
it's easy to mistake it for like a mockery, but
it's really a celebration of of weird science papers and
some you know, science papers that study the strange or
just the just the the the weird minutia that often gets,
(06:14):
you know, and and is inherently picked up in scientific literature.
As as science expands like a slime mold through the
labyrinth of of existence, you know, you're gonna pick up
some weird topics. And they celebrate these topics. And so
the two thousand three award went to um Keys moliker
Um who's a Dutch writer and curator of the Natural
(06:35):
History Museum in Rotterdam. Uh and he he won this
paper for his uh his recorded uh his first scientifically
recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the Mallard Duck. Yeah,
and before we get into the details here there's I
want to back up a second because one of the
things that I read was that apparently mallards in the
Netherlands are particularly known for what are called attempted rape flight,
(07:00):
and that this isn't necessarily from from what I was reading,
it's not necessarily heterosexual or homosexual. It's just more like
these ducks just go for it while they're flying, and
it's somewhat regardless of gender. But one in ten of
these attempted rape flights is homosexual, and that it's two
male ducks. Uh, And that basically what we're looking at
(07:23):
here in this example from Mullicker is that one of
the ducks died midflight, either from injuries due to their
struggle or maybe it ran into something, and the other
duck just landed and kept going. It's ending. It's hard not.
I laughed a little bit. It's so it's hard not,
you know what. I think it's okay for you to laugh.
(07:43):
I think it's okay for the people listening to lad
you gotta have a little bit of literal gallows you
with this in order to get through it. Yeah, I
mean they are justist ducks in this case doing what
ducks do to each other. Yeah, and as we're gonna
find too. You know, this kind of uh sexual behavior
is fairly common in a lot of animals, birds especially,
(08:06):
but yeah, these ducks, Um, it seems like I didn't
get the impression because I read the actual account for Muliker.
I don't know that he knew how the first duck died.
It sounded like maybe it crashed into something. But basically
there was this this duck corpse, and he saw the
second duck mounted and began to peck at it and
(08:28):
proceed for quite some time. I mean, he recorded pretty
precisely how long everything lasted, and I believe it was
like I don't have it in the notes here, but
I want to say it was like forty five or
seventy five minutes or something like that. So it wasn't
like this duck didn't realize what was happening, then realized
it's you know, it's a partner was dead, and stopped
(08:49):
it really you know, made a habit of it. Yeah,
And I think that's one of the reasons that the
the paper won the egg Nobel Prize and was so
everyone enjoyed it so much, is that it is this
meticulous look at this horrible thing then that you know,
most people might want to turn their eyes away from. Well,
that's the thing about it, right, is that Mullicker sat
(09:11):
there and watched this for let's say seventy five minutes,
and I'm assuming, with like a pad of paper and
just wrote it all down. And he actually, from what
I was reading, it was after that, after the second
I believe that this there were two instances of it
with the same deceased duck. Uh, he kind of shoot
away the other bird and finally took the corpse of
(09:32):
the mallard and um, you know, brought it inside, and
that other duck hung around kind of making noises for
a while afterwards. So it's an interesting case. I would
not be the person who would be so intent upon,
you know, cataloging this that I would be able to
hang out there for seventy five minutes. But yeah, it's
(09:54):
an example of the unflinching gaze of science. Now our
next case though, is it's more of an example of
the the definitely the flinch. Yeah. George Murray Levic, Yeah,
he was the medical officer on Captain Scott's Terra Nova
expedition to the South Pole in nineteen ten, and he
recorded the sexual activity of the Adeli penguins uh in
(10:16):
in detail, and he was he was somewhat shocked by
much of what he saw. And a lot of this
really has to do with with him falling into the
trap of seeing penguins as little people. You know, they
were little people in tuxedos instead of just bipedal birds.
Do you know what this movie? Do you know what
this article made me think of? Have you ever seen
(10:39):
that movie March of the Penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman.
I have not seen any of the various penguin related
movies that have come out. I I saw it, gosh,
must have been eleven years ago now or something like that.
Whenever it first came out. I saw it in the theater.
Is the one where they surf? Right? No? No, no,
this is like a documentary. This isn't the c G
(10:59):
I Happy I think you're thinking of Happy feat But
then came from what's his name, director of Mad Max,
So oh oh yeah that's right, George Miller. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Well, anyway,
for those of you out there who have seen much
of the penguins, and I think there is a whole
kind of genre of documentary film about Penguin's. One of
the things that bothered me about that movie at the
(11:19):
time is how much it personified the penguins. And clearly
from reading this like Levick, they must have left some
of the more animalistic behaviors of Penguin's out of the
cut so that it fit the sort of humanized narrative
that they established. As Morgan Freeman read to us, you know,
over the over this very nice footage of Penguin's. Yeah,
(11:40):
there's an article that came out on the BBC in
two thousand twelve titled Depraved sex Acts by Penguins Shock
Polar Explorer and uh it's it's a wonderful little read on.
Included link to it on the landing page for this episode.
But there's a quote there. Um. They they interviewed Douglas Russell,
who's creator of Eggs and Nest at the Natural History Museum,
(12:01):
and uh, he says, what is happening here is not
in any way analogus to necrophilia in the human context.
It is the male seeing the positioning that is causing
them to have a sexual reaction. They're not distinguishing between
live females who are awaiting congress in the colony, and
dead penguin's from the previous year, which just happened to
be in the same position, and so um. As the
(12:24):
article lays outge George Murray Levick, in writing about these penguins,
was so shocked that the the stuff about necrophilia he
essentially redacted only some of his peers and the individuals
that they shared it with. We're able to read the
full unedited account of penguin atrocities. Yeah, and in fact,
(12:45):
like that, it goes beyond just the necrophilia too. I
believe these penguins, similar to the mallards, you know, sort
of engage in in like a habitualized gang rape, is
what it sounded like, because there's lots of these male
penguins surrounding female penguins, and what ends up happening in
these situations situations is there so brutal that they accidentally
(13:08):
killed the partner. Yeah, I mean really, it should come
as no surprise, right that in a brutal environment, creatures
will behave brutally in order to survive. Um, which leads
us to HP Lovecraft. Yeah, this was I don't know
about you, but when I when I was reading this,
I started thinking about At the Mountains of Madness, his
(13:29):
novella which I just reread sometime in the last couple
of years, Like, it's kind of fresh, it's great. That's
one of my favorite Lovecraft pieces. It's a little bit
longer than his other ones, but yeah, yeah, one of
his later works. Definitely definitely science fiction. It's it's a
work that he conducted a lot of scientific research for.
He was Lovecraft of the guy who if he were
(13:50):
around today, you know, he would be hitting all the
science blogs. Who would be reading some of the journals.
He'd have a subscription to to several of the magazines.
He'd probably have a podcast at house of work. I
would hope so. And uh he uh. But he makes
several mention mentions of the penguin, like numerous mentions of penguins,
often describing them as grotesque penguins. And he probably would
(14:13):
have have read about about about Levis thoughts on the penguins.
And I'm probably not the unedited content, but he certainly
makes reference to Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition in the story. Yeah,
and if I remember correctly, in that story, those penguins
were somewhat gigantic, right, there was something to do with that.
They were sort of like prehistoric holdover penguins. And we know,
(14:35):
I believe from what I've I've read an other research
instances that that's a thing that that penguins did used
to be considerably larger than they are now. Yeah, I
almost feel like they come off more repellent in that
story than like the show goths. Oh yeah, they're they're
they're terrifying. Um. So let's move on to reptiles. Yeah.
(14:58):
So we've got a bunch of exa amples of of
reptiles in action performing necrophilia. And one of the first
ones that I found was from an article called It
was published this year called corpse Bride Irresistible. A dead
female tagu lizard courted by males for two days at
(15:19):
an urban park in southeastern Brazil. It's very specific that title.
I love the pool quote on this one from a
zoologist who observed this act and process. It's very similar
to the to the Mallard duck. This guy just sat
there and watched quote. I felt a sense of wonder, Well,
I'll go through this and then we can hit upon
some of the other lizards he provided a very detailed
(15:40):
account of what happened here with this tagu lizard. Apparently,
it mounted a recently dead female, gained hold by biting
the skin of her neck and attempting to mate with her.
The same male just kept biting the neck and rubbing
its left hind limbs on her body. And then this
basically was like I think a two day dead female.
(16:01):
So it wasn't, you know, as it wasn't similar to
the Mallard case where it'd like just happened. Um. Then
another smaller male came by and also held the neck
of it, and they seems to be, you know, biting
seems to be a major part of tagu lizard sex practice,
because they just were opening their jaws kind of biting
(16:22):
and putting their mouths around the whole head of this animal. Uh.
And then after a while it ceased its attempts, and
he this is exactly from his his figure description. The
male tongue flicked the female's head and scratched her hind
bodies with the right hind limb. So there you have it,
necrophilia between tagu lizards. I love though about this case.
(16:46):
One of the things I love about this case is
that the analysis of what's happening here goes deeper than
just oh, it's a stupid animal and it made a
stupid mistake and tried to mate with something that it
cannot mate with. They they point out that, first of all,
lizards of course cold blooded creatures. So it's not uh
so the creature that it's attempting to have sex with
(17:06):
though dead, uh you know, it's it's ambient body heat.
The body heat is essentially going to be that of
the ambient air, and uh pheromones are still going to
be in play even though it's dead. So there are
there are enough signals saying yes, I'm alive for the
you know, the dominating male to then come in and
try and do its thing. Yeah. I think that's an
(17:27):
important thing to distinguish here as well, too, is like,
consider that these animals are relying on senses that they
are very different than ours to distinguish what's what's available
and what's alive. I'm thinking it's probably less like, um,
you know, if if a human were to go to
a bar and try to chat up someone who's just
a corpse just propped up. Yeah, it's more like if
(17:47):
you're driving down the interstate and you see a sign
for a gas station and you pull in to get gas.
It said gas station. You know, pull the car up,
actually get out to fill up, and then realize that
the place is closed, exactly like the existing signs. The
major signs that we care about in this rather simplistic
ordeal are saying yes, we're open for business, when in
the fact the lizards dead. It's possible this table lizard
(18:10):
didn't even realize it at all, you know, even even afterwards.
It sounded like the same with a mallard. We've also
got this with another reptile, the Amazonian frog. I'm gonna
have trouble pronouncing this Latin name, right, ryan Ella probuscda. Yes,
And this one is fabulous because, as a two thirteen
(18:31):
study reveals, this is functional necrophilia. This is something that
pretty much every other organism out there, it's an impossibility
because necrophilia. We've often discussed this, we've discussed it so
far in lizards and birds. It's a mistake that cannot
possibly work. But in this frog, in proboscidia here are proboscidia, uh,
(18:56):
we actually see reproduct occurring through necrophilia, right, So they
extract eggs from their dead sexual partners, right, and and
then they fertilize them. They don't fertilize them and then
extract them. Right. This is so how this happened. And
it's not not to say they primarily or only reproduced
(19:18):
through neck, but on the table as as as a
viable option. So the males form a big mating ball
they make, you know, consist of you know, dozens of frogs,
and they're all just ready to go. And then along
comes a female and they essentially all began fighting on
top of her for the rights to mate with her.
And in some of the cases, she ends up drowning
(19:41):
at the bottom of this uh, this mating ball, um,
you know, and so it ends up with you end
up with cases where um. Researchers, particularly in this case,
uh Thiago Izzo from Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research.
He's analyzing the results of this breeding. He finds counting, yeah,
he's counting him like a hundred males to twenty dead
(20:03):
females in one in another one fifty males and five
dead females. But then when he starts dissecting the females,
there are no eggs. So he's trying to figure out
where did the eggs go, how did this what could
have possibly happened, and then he observed the act itself. Yeah,
and so like from what I had read that there's
(20:25):
this is unique I believe to this particular kind of frog.
But that one of the one of the articles that
I read on this, which was called necrophiliac behavior in
the career U toad, which is a different kind of toad,
but it also references this instance. It says that it's
been documented that in all groups of terrestrial tetrapods that
(20:47):
this kind of uh necrophilia happens, and that the basically
scientists just account for it as a lack of proper
recognition by males during reproductive season. So in in this
case with the Probisidia, that sounds like they do recognize
it though, and they say, okay, we've got to take
these eggs so that you know something actually happens with it. Yeah,
(21:09):
or at least they've they've reached the point in their
evolution to where it still works. So it's I mean,
it's it's been selected. Um, because Yeah, what happens is
the male squeeze the dead female's body the eggs pop out,
the male quickly fertilizes the eggs, and then they eventually
develop into healthy embryos. So like, where do they where
do they put these eggs while they're fertilizing. They just
have like a storage area. I got the impression from
(21:35):
from being the paper that they just kind of pop
out and it's just done. The beat is done right there. Okay,
So it's just like the egg is next to the
corpse of the female frog. Okay, Okay, I guess I
was imagining something a little bit more fantastic where these
like hundreds of bearded them away. Yeah, these rugs are
bringing these these these eggs back to their layer. I
(21:55):
believe Izzio did. Um he did observe like and when
at least one of the cases of the frog moving
the body to a location where he would be able
to have his way with it undisturbed by the other
other male frogs. All right, but but yeah, the fascinating
thing here is that it's believed that this provides a
reproductive advantage to both the deathborate outnumbered male who can't
(22:17):
get his hands on a live mate, as well as
the dead female because you know, even in her case
she's died through this rather brutal breathing process, but she's
still going to be able to fulfill the genetic mission. Yeah,
that is the fascinating part. And certainly, uh, it seems like,
at least in all the examples that we have here
(22:38):
of animals, that that reproduction is still the goal, right that, Like,
that's what seems to be going on in the heads
of these mallards or these frogs or teng google lizards
or penguins or whatever. And it makes me wonder too.
Like I said at the top, I'm sure there are
many other instances of other animals in the wild that
(22:58):
have done this, and he means have probably already documented it.
But like our friend with the penguins, they maybe don't
want to get that research. That's that's not the first
paper they're going to submit for publication, right, right, Yeah,
I get the impression that it's it's kind of an
understudied area of human behavior, but but certainly there's any Yeah,
certainly an understudied area of of animal behavior, but but
(23:21):
there's some there's some interesting work there. Nonetheless, so I
believe that this frog is a perfect way for us
to transition into human necrophiles. Um. Now, before we get
into anything to disturbing though, um, we should remind you
that like, basically human necrophilia can be achieved in a
(23:43):
way that is far less ethically sketchy and horrendous and
you know and on a front to the gods, etcetera.
And that is of course in the form of posthumous
sperm retrieval and posthumous egg retrieval, which is similar to
the frogs that we were just speaking exactly. Like, it's like,
basically it's the frog scenario carried out, um, you know,
(24:04):
far less brutally in human culture. Uh, the same thing
that the frog has been it has evolved to deal with.
Human technology allows us to do the same thing to
remove viable sperm or egg from a brain dead or
even recently the deceased individual and then utilize it uh
(24:26):
in reproduction in a in a healthy body. Yeah. I
had never heard of this before this before researching this episode,
but it seems perfectly plausible to me, and I could
sort of understand the motivation for some people as well. Yeah,
it's not you know, it's not it's almost a disservice
to call it necro to refer to it all as
necrophilia because it's it's certainly not you know, an abuse
(24:47):
of a body. It's there are allowed. There's some ethical
concerns and you know, most of them concerned legality and
consent of the individual whose reproductive material is being taken.
But but at at heart it is a reproductive act
occurring between a living individual and a dead individual. Almost
(25:07):
like when we're going back to that bacteria, right, they're
similarly mention line with the bacterial model that we discussed earlier. Um.
And we've had this technology for a little bit. Um. Yeah,
we've we've been carrying out the posthumous sperm retrieval for
a while, and in two thousand eleven we actually saw
the the the first um use of of of effective
(25:30):
posthumous egg retrieval. There's a paper with a kind of
horrible title, um that came out two twelve Michigan State
Law Review, Dying to be many using intentional parenthood as
a proxy for consent in posthumous egg retrieval case. Yeah,
that definitely sounds like something that I've noticed. That's a
that's a law article to Michigan State Law Review. It
(25:52):
sounds like a case of using a title to UM
kind of kind of make it a little bit more
sexy so it's more attractive to the publishers. Yeah, it was.
It feels a little weird, but but I mean at
hard it's I think it's a very sensible, UM, very
sensible procedure to carry out, provided you consent is clear
and established. You know, you have a sudden death that
(26:13):
occurs between two people who who want to uh to
have offspring, and here is a scientific way of achieving that.
And it sounds like this article was specifically about uh
an example in Israel where magistrates set a legal precedent
for this um for the harvesting and freezing of a
posthumous human being sax. Yeah, and I know some of
(26:34):
you are probably wondering, well, how how dead UH can
the individual be? I did find some stats on sperm
retrieval from a from two thousand six paper uh into
titled a Posthumous Sperm Retrieval Analysis of Time Interval to
Harvest Sperm and this is published in the journal Human Reproduction.
It said, quote, viable sperm is obtainable with ps R.
(26:57):
That's posthumous sperm retrieval well after the currently recommended twenty
four hour time interval PSR should be considered up to
thirty six hours after death following appropriate evaluation. No quote,
no correlation was found between cause of death and chance
for successful sperm retrieval. So that's sperm in particular, not
not not eggs. Yeah, okay, Yeah, So I wonder if
(27:18):
there's a paper out there that's about the time limits
on eggs as well. Yeah, I wonder if it's, uh,
if it's if it's about the same, or or maybe
it's if there's a little shorter. I'm not sure that.
If anybody out there knows, please tell us. Yeah, yeah,
we'll throw that information in there. Um. So this seems
like the moment for us to go down what probably
most of you thought you were going to be hearing
(27:39):
when you clicked on an episode that had necrophilia in
the title, which and we're going to call it classic necrophilia.
This is what you think of when you hear that word. Yeah,
and this is you know, if you want to get
off the train at this point, this is your stop,
because it's all human necrophilia from here. Yeah, this is
where it gets a bit spooky, but not as you know,
(27:59):
what I'm going to qualify that not as not as
a spooky or creepy as I thought it was going
to be. I mean, especially once you crunch the examples
that we've gone through already kind of demystifies and you know,
de horrifies the situation and that I find And there's
even some aspects of the human psychology that I can
I don't relate to or identify with, but I can
(28:21):
I can sympathize with with somebody, for instance, who misses
their dead loved one, which seems to be one of
the examples. We'll get into that, but I think what
we should really start with is is this one paper
that came out in seven which seems to be cited
in all of the research that's done on the psychology
(28:42):
of necrophilia. It is called Sexual Attraction to Corpses. A
Psychiatric Review of Necrophilia, is written by Jonathan P. Rossman
and Philip J. Resnick Uh And basically, these guys explored
a hundred and twenty two cases of necrophilia and they
found what is the eighty eight of them were from
world literature and thirty four were unpublished cases. What I
(29:04):
want to know and I actually downloaded the whole article.
I gotta go back through and look at the methodology.
I don't think they explained it in there though. Where
where do you get these cases? It's they make it
sound like you just go to the library and you're like, yes,
I would like all of the world literature cases on necliphilia. Please. Yeah.
I don't recall seeing that specified in the paper either.
But but you know, they had a lot to two
(29:26):
on they did, and they they used it to basically
create some categorizations, some classifications of types of necrophilia. Right,
so we've got and they came up with three. Whether
first of all, they're two, they're they're sort of a
line in the stand that they draw initially between necrophilia
and pseudo necrophilia, and pseudo necrophilia is you know, this
(29:49):
consists of of transient attraction to human corpses, but it's not.
But it with with these individuals with pseudo necrophiliacs, sex
with the corps is not the central part of their fantasies.
They're primarily interested in living sexual partners. But you know
they're they're not averse to uh to to going after
(30:10):
something dead. This group includes uh sadistic opportunistic and transitory
cases of necrophilia. And again, like let's distinguish here. Necrophilia
is the desire to have sex with a dead body,
not the act of having sex with a dead body.
Some of these lead to that, obviously, but some of
these necrophilix that they're referring to in the literature didn't
(30:31):
act upon their fantasies. Yeah, Like I could see someone
being tricked and being classified as a pseudo necrophiliac, you know,
like they have a drink in them and you're just
talking to them instead, would you, And under these circumstances,
and then eventually they break and say well, I don't know, maybe,
and then and then all of a sudden they're in
study on necrophilia. That's where they got them all. So okay,
(30:56):
the first one is the first categorization that they came
up with is I think what a lot of people
think of when they hear the word necrophilia, but they
categorize it as a type called necrophilic homicide. So what
we're talking about here this is sort of the Jeffrey
Dahmer model of an individual murders somebody in order to
(31:19):
obtain a corpse for their necrophilic fantasies, and from from
what I was reading about Dahmer, and I mean, that's
a whole another rabbit hole that we could go down
for the other episode. And I think Ted Bundy also
partook in this, but that the idea was that those
those men could not uh feel sexual pleasure unless the
(31:40):
part of their quote unquote partner it's a terrible word
for it, in this situation was was dead or at
least like de humanized, and to a significant degree because
I believe Dahmer tried to create essentially zombies out of
by drilling into their their skull. But but it kind
of comes down to the same thing. They need needed
a person devoid of will, and the easiest way to
(32:05):
achieve that is, of course to kill the individual. Yeah,
the key here seems to be that what these people
are looking for is a partner who is quote and
this is from the text unresisting and unrejecting. So I
don't know necessarily that it's like it. Maybe it is
in some cases that the act of killing sort of
(32:26):
sexualizes the situation. But what they're looking for is somebody
who won't reject them, and somebody who isn't going to
resist them. Right, we'll break down more on the motives
for all these cases. Yeah, And one fact that I
wanted to throw out there that wasn't in these studies
but was another study came out was this woman Michelle
Stein from the John J. College of Criminal Justice in
(32:47):
New York. She reviewed two hundred and eleven sexual homicides
and she found that only eight percent of those involved necrophilia.
So when we're talking about you know, sexual deviancy, sexual
prime and necrophilia, it's actually quite rare. I mean, first
of all, these these deviant situations are rare, That's why
(33:07):
we call them deviant. But then also that within that structure,
the actual act of sex with a dead body is
fairly rare as well. Within within these uh criminal acts, Yeah,
I mean you also can imagine the ven diagram right
of the of the the psychotic murder or wentless murder,
(33:27):
and the type of individual who would want sexual contact
with a dead bye. Yeah, it seems as such, and
I think that, yeah, the ven diagram sliver is probably
fairly small. So don't listen to this episode and think,
oh my god, they're everywhere that that's not the case,
at least from what the research says. Now, the next
classification under a genuine necrophilia is a regular necrophilia, and
(33:50):
this is I like to think that this is the
scavenger approach, entitling the use of entailing the use of
an already dead body for sex, so, um, you know
it's will explore late are a lot of this happens
to to line up with one's job. You're in a
job where you're in close contact with dead bodies and
the opportunity simply presents itself. Yeah. Yeah, And I suspect
(34:12):
that that is probably the situation. Referring back to the
sexual homicides and the necrophilia like sort of numbers, I
suspect that this is a bit more common, actually far
more common. I think it's extremely rare to have somebody
like a Jeffrey Dahmer type. And then the third one
that they categorize and this is sixty eight percent of
(34:35):
the people that they categorize as necrophiliacs is necrophilic fantasy.
So this is basically getting back to the pseudo necrophilia.
This is the idea that it's a it's a fantasy
they have of having sex with a corpse, but they
don't actually do it um and they sort of I
think that, and by day I mean that the researchers
here think that these necrophiles often choose occupations that will
(34:58):
put them in can attact with corpses. So I don't know,
working in a morgue or a hospital or maybe a
grave digger, I don't know, Yeah, hospitals, graves in some cases.
You know, we'll look at some of the stats in
a bit. I think like clerics and even soldiers come up. Basically,
any kind of profession you can imagine in which you
would find yourself in proximity to a dead body. And
(35:21):
here's a couple of numbers to break this down of
the necrophiles wanted to be reunited with the dead partner.
So this is the one that I was saying earlier
that I can sort of not that I would participate
in this, like my wife died or something like that,
but I can I feel emotion for these people who
are so saddened by the loss of their life partner
(35:44):
that they fantasize. They're not even actually acting upon it,
they're just fantasizing about being reunited with them. It reminds
me of the old Irish ballad that particularly Shane O'Connor
did a version of this, and also Dead Can Dance
to the Fact was version of this, I'm stretched on
your grave and will lie there forever about someone who's
(36:05):
lost their beloved and there just lying on their grave. Yes,
very modeling. Sounds quite light with my experience with Irish
folk songs that kind of attitude, and I think all
of us can relate to it on at least that
level of sorrow. I think um, okay, fift percent of
(36:25):
them were just attracted to corpses. Twelve percent had a
power trip over this, right, so twelve percent of the
people that they looked at saw that they very much
like how we think about I think sexual assault is
that it's a power strategy more than it is a
sexual uh motivated crime. You know, I can't help but
particularly in the whole idea about being attracted to corpses,
(36:47):
I can't help but think of individuals growing up in
the age of VHS, you know where you know, nowadays,
if someone has access to the Internet, they can find
just about an the example of sexual activity they want. Sure,
you know, if the appropriate supervision isn't there. But when
I was growing up, Like the easiest way to to
(37:09):
see uh, you know more kind of adult content was
through horror movies and science fiction movies. You know. So
you know, you're not gonna go to the video store
and rent something, you know, from the adult section, but
you can certainly rent alien. You can rent rent a
Return of the Living Dead, which of course has a
naked zombie in it. So, like, I wondered to what
it's you know, that's an important time in one sexual
(37:31):
there's a there's a culturals like guyst around that that's
somewhat maybe encourages such fantasies. I wonder. Yeah, like because
imagine there are a lot of people out there who
have their you know, their their sexual development kind of
crosses into this horror genre and then and there they
just sort of burned their mind or various sexy zombies,
(37:53):
you know, like what and that's been a trope for
at least the last couple of years. Is the whole
zombie thing turned into a boom? I think there was
a lot of like, let's make cash off of this
by making those zombie zombies sexy as well. Yeah, um
so this makes me think of you know, it's no
surprise to the listeners. Both Robert and I are big
horror fans. I was on Bloody Disgusting I think it
(38:15):
was Bloody Disgusting, which is a you know, horror fan website,
the other day and they had a list of, like
I think it was like the top ten scenes of
necrophilia in horror movies, uh, you know, overall, And I
was shocked that there were so many. And then as
I kind of went through it, I went, oh, some
of these are actually like tasteful movies that tasteful horror
(38:37):
movies that had, you know, a scene that had to
do with the the character of the plot. It wasn't
just thrown in there to be shocking or to you
know Garner, you know, cult status. I guess yeah, growing up,
I remember, we're not growing up. It was more like college.
I remember hearing about Necromantic. I think it was a
German film. Yeah, it's like kind of a video nasty classification,
(39:00):
you know, banned a lot of places. I never saw it,
but it was. It's it's kind of I think it's
held up there as one of the earlier that might
have been on the list. I'm trying to remember some
of them I'm sure a d and Twenty Days of
Sawdom was on there. Um, but I've never seen that
slou And I believe there's I believe there's necrophilia and that.
Um god, I don't remember. I actually saw it in
(39:23):
the last year for the first time. Yeah, because one
of our coworkers owns it. U because I mean, it's uh,
I'm gonna have fun guessing who that is later, But
it's uh. I mean, it's it's an interesting film, and
that it is highly controversial, but it's it's uh, it's
artistically well made. It's it's a work of troubling art. Yeah,
(39:43):
like the I mean the director was stabbed to death
shortly after it. I didn't know that really, And it's
it's a I ended up not watching it in full, Like,
I just could not watch a lot of it. I
never saw it. But I remember when I was in college,
I had a girlfriend who was in a film class
and they had a signed say Low as something that
they had to watch for class, and she was mortified. Um,
(40:06):
and just I don't I don't think she was able
to make it through. It was you know, probably part
of the class was a part of the exercise was
to see whether or not people could make it through
that movie. Getting back to the actual you know, necrophilic fantasies,
power trips come into it as you as you would
suspect um. And then you know, as we referred to earlier,
(40:26):
that the homicidal necrophiliacs. That's again only twelve percent of
the cases they surveyed. So it's quite a small sliver.
Twelve percent out of what what are these guys? They
had a hundred and twenty two cases. And then with
the other case, it was out of two hundred and
eleven sexual homicides, it was only eight percent that involved necrophilia. Okay,
(40:48):
So one last part to this study that they did,
they also developed a model to help understand what kind
of events led to these you know, psychological categorizations, and
this is what they found. They found four um as
you would imagine, poor self esteem, largely due to a
significant loss in their life. Um. So that would probably
bring us back to the you know, who wanted to
(41:10):
be reunited with their dead partners. Uh. As you would expect,
they're usually male, uh And there are men who have
a fear of being rejected by women. And so as
we discussed earlier, they desire a sex sex object that
is incapable of rejecting them. The third is that they
some of them actually have like a fear of the dead.
(41:31):
They're scared of being around dead bodies, and this like
as a way of conquering that, I suppose transform It
transforms that fear into a desire um, which I think
is fairly common transition, not necessarily with dead bodies. I
think most people don't experience it on that level. But
being afraid of something is also titillating, you know. That's
(41:55):
why we watch horror movies exactly. Uh. And then the
last one is just you know, the the fantasy of
some It sometimes begins after you've just had your first
exposure to a corpse, whether that's you know, as a
child or an adult. Um. Yeah, it's a shocking and
and and and it makes an impact absolutely. Uh. So
(42:15):
there is there's there's a there's another pretty widely cited
study by a guy named I believe this is pronounced
a nil Agra wall uh and he he published this
in two thousand nine, and I I believe from what
I saw was that this was used to subsequently create
(42:36):
a new DSM entry on necrophilia and his His study
was called a New Classification for Necrophilia, was published in
the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine in two thousand nine,
and he came up with ten categories. Okay, we'll go
through these. First up, role players, people who get aroused
from pretending their live partner is dead during sexual activity. Okay.
(42:58):
And then we have romantic necrophilia acts. These are these
are what we were discussing before, bereaved people who remain
attached to their dead lover's body, so they're you know,
this is about sorrow. Then the number three necrophiliac fantasize.
There's people who fantasize about necrophilia but never actually have
sex with a corpse. And there's tactile necrophiliacs, people who
are aroused by touching or just stroking a corpse without
(43:21):
engaging an intercourse. I seem to remember that there was
an extremely creepy episode of that TV show Millennium where
there was a guy who that was his particular thing
was just like showing up to funerals and pretending to
be a friend of the family just so I could
touch the corps. Number five is a fetishistic necrophiliacs. These
are people who remove objects or body parts, even from
(43:42):
a corpse, for sexual purposes, but without engaging an intercourse. Okay,
and then as you as you can see where kind
of this this list is getting worse as we're progressing.
Uh necro mutual omaniacs. These are people, I know that
sounds like a made up thing, but this is actually
sounds like for sure, people who derive pleasure from mutilating
a corpse while masturbating but not engaging in intercourse. Number
(44:08):
seven Opportunistic necrophiliacs. These are people who normally have no
interest in necrophilia, but they if they have the opportunity,
they're going to take it. So yeah, I mean, I
don't I'm having a really hard time imagining this scenario
where this would happen. But I guess when you're left
alone with a dead body for some reason and yeah,
I don't know, maybe you're maybe you're performing an autopsy
(44:30):
or something. I'm not sure. Uh, regular NECROPHILIAX. That's people
who preferably, you know, just want to have sex with
the dead. So kind of back to that other model
that we talked about before, Like they would even probably
tell you look I'm not one of those exciting kind
of necrophiles. I'm just old school necrophile. Uh. And they're
(44:51):
again they're not killing people, right, let's be clear about that.
That's the next one. Yeah. Number nine is homicidal necrophiliacs
that we've discussed already, people who want to who want
to commit in order to have sex with the dead.
And then there is the tenth one, which is exclusive necrophiliacs,
people who have an exclusive interest in sex with the
dead and cannot perform at all for living partners. Now,
(45:13):
this is what I think they categorized Jeffrey dahmeraz that
like in his case, this was the only way that
he could perform to have any kind of sexual gratification,
and subsequently led to him both being homicidal necrophiliac and
exclusive necrophiliac. Now, I have some other stats here just
to roll through from that Rossman and Resnick paper, just
(45:34):
to give you a little more idea about who necrophiles
are and uh in why they do what they do.
Sex in that study were male. Um, yeah, and I
found one rare female case was cited. Uh, And I
didn't have the time to be able to look up
the case study on this, but her name was Karen
green Lee, so apparently she's a well known female necrophiliacy.
(45:58):
The mean age was thirty four, which makes sense. You know,
you need to be young enough to get around and
not have anything tying you down, but also your sexual
appetite needs to have had time to reach this point
right right, And also probably you would need to be
you know, as we know about like them taking employment
in situations that put them to your dead bodies, you
(46:19):
would need to be of age in order to kind
of have a job like that. Um, next up i Q.
And this is really interesting because there's there has long
been and still kind of remains, the stereotype of the
necrofile as being essentially, you know, mentally deficient, that they're
you know, almost like the example of a stupid reptile
just engaging with this because they don't know anymore better.
But in uh in Rosmann Resnics paper, they point out
(46:42):
that all of the individuals that they profiled had i
q s above eighty and sixty nine percent had i
qs above a hundred and just to put that frame
of reference, normal to average intelligence is nine two d
and nine. So these for the most part we're not
dealing with the with unintelligent individuals. This isn't technically like
(47:05):
a disability and mental disability. This is deviant behavior. And
among true necrophiles, s percent had i q s above
a hundred um. Sixty percent of the cases there was
a prior history of statistic acts. Uh. Sexual orientation attention
was pretty much comparable to the general population sent heterosexual,
thirteen bisexual, nine percent homosexual. There is not really surprising
(47:30):
um underlying mental problems. This is interesting because this also
gets into the idea that not only this preconceived notion
that necrophiles are all going to be both mentally deficient
and crazy. Only seventeen percent were psychotic, eleven percent among
true necrophiles had personality of disorders had unusual belief systems,
(47:52):
though seventy percent seventy three of pseudo necrophiles did, which
you know, makes sense. If you're fantasizing about sex with
the dead, you probably have, you know, a different worldview
from your average Yeah, that's fair. Of those pseudo necrophiles
consumed alcohol compared to forty of true necrophiles, So I
(48:14):
guess that's just I wonder what they mean by that.
If it's like alcoholism or just you know, they they did,
they didn't imbibe at all. It kind of I guess
I kind of think of it in terms of, you know,
I'm gonna need a drink for this. Um. So maybe
the true necrophiles you actually don't see as much alcohol
(48:35):
consumption because it is like they are, they're kind of
enough in the necrophilia camp that there's no need for
liquid courage, Whereas if it's just your fantasy, then maybe
it's the kind of thing that you have to decompress
to get down to the point where you're fantasizing about it,
you know. Well. And then fifty seven percent of necrophiles
(48:57):
were found to be in an employed profession that gave
them access to dead bodies. We've got a list here,
hospital orderlies, more attendant, cemetery employees, funeral parlor workers, and
as you said earlier, clerics and soldiers. I found two
other studies that I feel like I need to be mentioned,
but I'm a little dubious of the reporting here, and
(49:21):
I'd like to see some more research or maybe if
anybody out there has experienced with this kind of research
or psychological experience, maybe they can tell us what they think.
But these two studies basically connected the symptoms of necrophilia
to both autism and asperger syndrome. Both these studies came
out in twleven and basically it seemed like their conclusions
(49:43):
were drawn from the fact that there was a similar
lack of empathy between those with Asperger's and those who
were interested in necrophilia. Uh, that was about it, um.
One of them, one of these studies said that they
they suggested something called autistic psychopathy lead to experimentation with chemistry, poisons,
(50:06):
and killing, which subsequently they kind of tied into necrophilia. Uh.
These studies were the first one is called necrophilia and
autistic psychopathy and the other one is necrophilia and serial killers.
Is there evidence for Asperger's syndrome? So, I mean this
is published research. I wanted to mention it, but I'm
also a little wary of making a connection between these
(50:29):
two different kind of mental states just based on the
lack of empathy. Yeah, I mean, there are only two
studies and it's such a a hotbed um topic that
I would uh yeah, I would hate to spend too
much time on it, but you know, hey, if we
see more more papers come out. Um, you know, maybe
we'll come back to it now. Another interesting thing about
(50:51):
necrophilia is when you get into illegal issues involved here,
because of course corpses are not really people, right, So
these are crimes that often fall through the cracks unless
there's a specific necrophilia law on the books, and without
such a law in place, it often proves difficult to
prosecute uh necrophiles. Yeah, and so this is, you know,
(51:13):
something that I guess I never thought about and sort
of assumed would be on the books. But obviously it's yeah, exactly.
But there was a case, you know, kind of one
of the leading cases was in Wisconsin in two thousand six. Uh.
It turned out there was a case where three men
were caught while they were trying to exhume a dead
woman for sex. Uh. The men admitted to it, but
(51:33):
another reason they know is that they brought a box
of condoms. I remember this. I think I blogged about it.
That's where I read about it. It was you were
the source for this one for me. But so what
ended up happening was technically their lawyers argued there was
no crime committed because there was no law on the
books that said that it was against the law. So
(51:54):
this prompted Wisconsin Supreme Court two years later in two
thousand eight, to finally decide on a law that forbid
copulating with the deceased. So that's one example. I'm sure
there are many other examples, but it's one of those
things where I guess, like, until it actually happens and
they need to prosecute, they don't put it on the books. Yeah,
are you going to be the weird politician who brings
(52:16):
up just necrophilia laws when there's no apparent need, right, Yeah,
that's gonna kill your presidential aspects. Incidentally, that blog post
was one of the first ones I did for How
Stuff Works right after we started the blogs, and and
it was like immediately they had to hide it because
they were like, I don't know, there are a lot
of eyes in the blog. Let's not have this be
(52:37):
one of the top posts. That's too bad. I liked it. Well. Uh.
One of the other things that came out of this
when I was looking at the research here, is specifically
about the legality is many of the families who are
involved with incidents like this where a family member's corpse
is a victim of necrophilia. They have a problem of
(53:00):
it because they sort of psychologically think of the corpse
as being their property. Right, So, like, as you're saying before, yes,
it's not technically a living human being, some people would
probably argue, I wouldn't. This is a victimless crime, right,
But uh, it's not in that that the family members
see this as being their loved one and technically property
(53:23):
even though it's not a living person. Yeah, it kind
of comes down to just what a somewhat a complicated
area it occupies in our in our understanding of of
our life and our our biological life, even because it's
it's that it's our loved one, but it's not our
loved one. It's that it's a person, but it's not
really a person. Still. Yeah, And I mean, like I
(53:44):
said at the beginning, to you know, this is considered
to be the ultimate transgression in our culture, one of them. Uh,
and therefore it's something that we both have a hard
time talking about in sort of empirical terms like we're
trying to do today, or in legal terms. And then
at the same time, it's so sensationalized that we can't
(54:07):
seem to stop talking about it. Whenever it comes up. Right,
I'm sure if you googled Wisconsin necrophilia, there's probably two
hundred newspaper articles out there from two thousands six when
this happened. You know, everybody was covering it that week. Yeah,
and then yet when you start thinking about it, it's
like if you have a deranged individual and if they
were to you know, put the question to you, Hey,
(54:28):
I'm going to do one of two things this weekend.
Which should I do? Should I dig up a corpse
and copulate with it, or should I kill somebody? Or
should I even just assault somebody? Like obviously you're gonna
pick the corpse one because it is in a sense
of the victim was crime. Yeah, I would probably, uh,
you know, call the police. Well, yes, that's the correct
(54:50):
that's the correct answer, you know, even if it's a
covering myself legally here, No matter how good of a friend.
I always when I think about this topic now, I
always come back to Cornt McCarthy's novel Child of God,
where the central character, Lester Ballard is a necrophile. Okay,
I haven't read that. It's it's exceedingly good. It's one
of those books I keep coming back to Um, because
(55:13):
it's this character is a very dark character, but you're
so close to him in the book. You do sympathize
with his with it, with his his psyche to a
large extent. It's it's so so very well presented. I
think in I was trying to think of fictional examples
for this episode. The only one I can remember is,
(55:35):
do you remember that Marquis Assad movie that had Jeffrey
Rush playing the Marquis Assad. I remember when it came out,
but I've never seen it in full. There's I believe
a scene in that in which Joaquin Phoenix engages in
necrophilia with Kate Winslet's corpse um And I think, you know, obviously,
because it's about the Marquis Assad, there's a certain amount
(55:56):
of of bacchanalia to the whole ring, right, Um. But
it's but it's if I remember the plot correctly. It's
been a long time since I've seen that movie. I
believe it was because like he was grieving for her
and they were, you know, sort of in love. Interesting.
I should maybe see it at some point. I've read that.
I don't remember it being bad. I've read the sod
(56:18):
I find him to be a fascinating character. Yeah, yeah,
I think he's interesting in small doses. I have a
hundred and twenty Days of Sodom, and I can only
read like maybe like two or three pages. I see,
I tried to read the whole thing. The problem with
a hundred twenty days is that, um, it's basically incomplete,
and so the further you get into the book, it
eventually breaks down into just an outline of what he
(56:40):
intended to finish. Yeah, I think they were originally published
the unreadable pamphlets, Is that right, like a series of pamphlets.
I think that. I think it's the one that he
secretly wrote in a prison cellf So it was it was,
it was hidden away for a while, but I never
officially finished. So it's just in terms, and not only
it's the content often to fficult to read, but it
(57:01):
becomes increasingly unreadable as a word, because it's just a
complete Yeah. Well yeah, that's mine market assad and you've
got Cormac McCarthy to have literally great, it's a great book. Um.
James Franco made a movie version, which I've heard good
things about. I'll probably never see it, just because it's
it's a book I love so much. I have such
(57:22):
a crystal you know, it's a kind of mar your
imaginary Yeah, but I hear good things, so you know,
maybe our you know, listeners out there who aren't is
into uh into reading reading, want to just you know,
see a film, maybe check it out. If it's true
to the book, then it'll it'll do. It does a
good job. So there you have it, one from the vaults,
(57:44):
one we're really proud of, and one that we thought
everyone wouldn't it would either not mind listening to a
second time, or you know, here's a chance to discover
it for the first time. If you're a new or listener. Yeah,
and if you've got some thoughts that you want to
share with us now about necrophilia and what you learned
in this episode, don't forget to write us at blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
(58:13):
on this than batands over. Their topics is that how
stuff works dot com The big
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop works
dot com. Hey, you wasn't to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. So
this is gonna be a repeat episode, but we wanted
to give you a little bit of an introduction to it.
This is from about a year ago when Robert and
(00:24):
I did an episode on the science of necrophilia, and
I'm going to just throw it out there, this is
one of my favorite episodes that we've ever recorded. Yeah,
this one is a really fun topic to research. I
thought that the episode came together perfectly and we we
were were able to demystify the topic takes something that
is often seen is just you know, utterly repellent. You
(00:45):
just you don't even want to look closer. Maybe you
maybe you do, but in a gruesome car exc But
but when you strip away the human complexities that the
actual science is really fascinating as well. Yeah, and I
just you know, want to know, we talked about this
up front in the episode. I believe, but don't don't
think that this is going to be some like gross
out fest or anything like that. We approach this the
way we do all of our other episodes with a
(01:05):
lot of research, and uh, with a modicum of dignity,
I guess is what I would say, the same monicum
of dignity that we we we dust off for every episode.
Yeah yeah, but like organic food. Yeah exactly. So without
further ado, let's jump into it, all right, So we're
(01:26):
gonna start off by just by discussing necrophilia in in
the animal kingdom. I mean generally, that's the way it
goes with these things. We can talk about a simpler
model of what's going on with the animals before we
dare throw in the complications of the human mind and
human culture. And what I was the most shocked about
with this as we did the research was how prevalent
(01:47):
it is. I mean, We've got at least what like
five or six examples of different animals h that practice
necrophilia today, and I'm sure there are dozens more out
there that have just not been cataloged. And because we'll
find with the penguin, it was and then that research
was redacted basically for cultural reasons. It was just too
(02:07):
shocking to share. I mean, but essentially you can sum
it all up in a bumper sticker like, necrophilia happens,
and yes, and the more you you just sort of
acclimatized to that reality, the easier going everything else. Is
that it's not something that is not necessarily an act
that is just a defilement before the gods, as much
as a thing that occurs in the natural order of things,
(02:31):
and often as an accident. But accidents happen, and uh,
and then human culture just makes it a little more complicated.
You know. What just occurred to me, Robert, is that
we're assuming that our audience automatically knows what necrophilia is.
That's true. Yeah, so maybe we should just, i mean
throw out a very basic definition which is in fact,
(02:53):
and this was one of the things that surprised me
doing the research. In the case of necrophilia, it is
not the act of having sex with a dead body,
with a corpse. It is the desire to right, Yeah,
just the desire to alone. The fantasy of necrophilia is
enough to classify one as a necrophilia um, and the
term itself is actually pretty new. Necrophilia is an entirely
(03:15):
nineteenth century term, but of course the practice it describes
the sexual abuse of courses it's quite ancient myths going
back as far as human memory, probably because it you know,
it gets down to a lot of the key problems
with dealing of death. Um. But of course you have
to sort of define what is sex too before we write,
(03:37):
because of course, human intercourse is essentially the physical act
that allows the exchange of genetic information to mix everything
around and create a new organism as offspring. Right. Yeah,
And that's what makes our first example in sort of
the quote unquote animal world interesting because it's so alien
to how we understand intercourse. It almost seems like it
(04:01):
wouldn't be categorized as necrophilia technically, but it's referred to
as such in the literature, right, And I'm sure in
the science headlines I didn't. I mean, maybe not yet,
But it's just waiting for the right paper to come
out and then all the various science blogs will really
run with the headline that will include the phrase bacterial necrophilia. Um.
Of course, bacteria they don't actually need to engage in
(04:25):
intercourse in order to reproduce. Instead, they tend to swallow
up DNA from other bacteria just as they move around,
and they'll even absorb it from dead bacterial cells, they
exchange new DNA fragments from the dead with their own,
and then by shuffling all this around, they're essentially mating
with the dead, uh, in a way that most higher
(04:46):
creatures fail to achieve. Yeah. The stuff that I read
about this, in particular, I'm going to be honest, was
so dense that I had a hard time understanding it.
It seems like it's its own very special niche field, uh,
that that has its own language, and that I don't
know necessarily that they're using necrofile or necrophilia sort of
(05:09):
in the same way that we understand it when we're
applying it, certainly to human beings but also to other animals.
But it is how it is described in the literature. Yeah,
it is a genetic exchange between the living and the dead. Um. So, yeah,
it's almost its own thing because it doesn't really match
up with most of the models of of biological higher
organism necrophilia, but it's important to include here, especially I
(05:32):
think it's a it's perfect to include at the top,
But if you want to move on, we can get
into what what Robert has coined here as the duck
of death. And I'm sure, a lot of people are
familiar with this one from the Ignoble Prizes, particularly the
the Ignoble Prize for Biology in two thousand three. Now,
just to rehash, uh, the Ignoble Prizes, this comes out,
(05:54):
These come out every year. This was new to me
and you explained it to me before the podcast. Yeah, it's, uh,
it's easy to mistake it for like a mockery, but
it's really a celebration of of weird science papers and
some you know, science papers that study the strange or
just the just the the the weird minutia that often gets,
(06:14):
you know, and and is inherently picked up in scientific literature.
As as science expands like a slime mold through the
labyrinth of of existence, you know, you're gonna pick up
some weird topics. And they celebrate these topics. And so
the two thousand three award went to um Keys moliker
Um who's a Dutch writer and curator of the Natural
(06:35):
History Museum in Rotterdam. Uh and he he won this
paper for his uh his recorded uh his first scientifically
recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the Mallard Duck. Yeah,
and before we get into the details here there's I
want to back up a second because one of the
things that I read was that apparently mallards in the
Netherlands are particularly known for what are called attempted rape flight,
(07:00):
and that this isn't necessarily from from what I was reading,
it's not necessarily heterosexual or homosexual. It's just more like
these ducks just go for it while they're flying, and
it's somewhat regardless of gender. But one in ten of
these attempted rape flights is homosexual, and that it's two
male ducks. Uh, And that basically what we're looking at
(07:23):
here in this example from Mullicker is that one of
the ducks died midflight, either from injuries due to their
struggle or maybe it ran into something, and the other
duck just landed and kept going. It's ending. It's hard not.
I laughed a little bit. It's so it's hard not,
you know what. I think it's okay for you to laugh.
(07:43):
I think it's okay for the people listening to lad
you gotta have a little bit of literal gallows you
with this in order to get through it. Yeah, I
mean they are justist ducks in this case doing what
ducks do to each other. Yeah, and as we're gonna
find too. You know, this kind of uh sexual behavior
is fairly common in a lot of animals, birds especially,
(08:06):
but yeah, these ducks, Um, it seems like I didn't
get the impression because I read the actual account for Muliker.
I don't know that he knew how the first duck died.
It sounded like maybe it crashed into something. But basically
there was this this duck corpse, and he saw the
second duck mounted and began to peck at it and
(08:28):
proceed for quite some time. I mean, he recorded pretty
precisely how long everything lasted, and I believe it was
like I don't have it in the notes here, but
I want to say it was like forty five or
seventy five minutes or something like that. So it wasn't
like this duck didn't realize what was happening, then realized
it's you know, it's a partner was dead, and stopped
(08:49):
it really you know, made a habit of it. Yeah,
And I think that's one of the reasons that the
the paper won the egg Nobel Prize and was so
everyone enjoyed it so much, is that it is this
meticulous look at this horrible thing then that you know,
most people might want to turn their eyes away from. Well,
that's the thing about it, right, is that Mullicker sat
(09:11):
there and watched this for let's say seventy five minutes,
and I'm assuming, with like a pad of paper and
just wrote it all down. And he actually, from what
I was reading, it was after that, after the second
I believe that this there were two instances of it
with the same deceased duck. Uh, he kind of shoot
away the other bird and finally took the corpse of
(09:32):
the mallard and um, you know, brought it inside, and
that other duck hung around kind of making noises for
a while afterwards. So it's an interesting case. I would
not be the person who would be so intent upon,
you know, cataloging this that I would be able to
hang out there for seventy five minutes. But yeah, it's
(09:54):
an example of the unflinching gaze of science. Now our
next case though, is it's more of an example of
the the definitely the flinch. Yeah. George Murray Levic, Yeah,
he was the medical officer on Captain Scott's Terra Nova
expedition to the South Pole in nineteen ten, and he
recorded the sexual activity of the Adeli penguins uh in
(10:16):
in detail, and he was he was somewhat shocked by
much of what he saw. And a lot of this
really has to do with with him falling into the
trap of seeing penguins as little people. You know, they
were little people in tuxedos instead of just bipedal birds.
Do you know what this movie? Do you know what
this article made me think of? Have you ever seen
(10:39):
that movie March of the Penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman.
I have not seen any of the various penguin related
movies that have come out. I I saw it, gosh,
must have been eleven years ago now or something like that.
Whenever it first came out. I saw it in the theater.
Is the one where they surf? Right? No? No, no,
this is like a documentary. This isn't the c G
(10:59):
I Happy I think you're thinking of Happy feat But
then came from what's his name, director of Mad Max,
So oh oh yeah that's right, George Miller. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Well, anyway,
for those of you out there who have seen much
of the penguins, and I think there is a whole
kind of genre of documentary film about Penguin's. One of
the things that bothered me about that movie at the
(11:19):
time is how much it personified the penguins. And clearly
from reading this like Levick, they must have left some
of the more animalistic behaviors of Penguin's out of the
cut so that it fit the sort of humanized narrative
that they established. As Morgan Freeman read to us, you know,
over the over this very nice footage of Penguin's. Yeah,
(11:40):
there's an article that came out on the BBC in
two thousand twelve titled Depraved sex Acts by Penguins Shock
Polar Explorer and uh it's it's a wonderful little read on.
Included link to it on the landing page for this episode.
But there's a quote there. Um. They they interviewed Douglas Russell,
who's creator of Eggs and Nest at the Natural History Museum,
(12:01):
and uh, he says, what is happening here is not
in any way analogus to necrophilia in the human context.
It is the male seeing the positioning that is causing
them to have a sexual reaction. They're not distinguishing between
live females who are awaiting congress in the colony, and
dead penguin's from the previous year, which just happened to
be in the same position, and so um. As the
(12:24):
article lays outge George Murray Levick, in writing about these penguins,
was so shocked that the the stuff about necrophilia he
essentially redacted only some of his peers and the individuals
that they shared it with. We're able to read the
full unedited account of penguin atrocities. Yeah, and in fact,
(12:45):
like that, it goes beyond just the necrophilia too. I
believe these penguins, similar to the mallards, you know, sort
of engage in in like a habitualized gang rape, is
what it sounded like, because there's lots of these male
penguins surrounding female penguins, and what ends up happening in
these situations situations is there so brutal that they accidentally
(13:08):
killed the partner. Yeah, I mean really, it should come
as no surprise, right that in a brutal environment, creatures
will behave brutally in order to survive. Um, which leads
us to HP Lovecraft. Yeah, this was I don't know
about you, but when I when I was reading this,
I started thinking about At the Mountains of Madness, his
(13:29):
novella which I just reread sometime in the last couple
of years, Like, it's kind of fresh, it's great. That's
one of my favorite Lovecraft pieces. It's a little bit
longer than his other ones, but yeah, yeah, one of
his later works. Definitely definitely science fiction. It's it's a
work that he conducted a lot of scientific research for.
He was Lovecraft of the guy who if he were
(13:50):
around today, you know, he would be hitting all the
science blogs. Who would be reading some of the journals.
He'd have a subscription to to several of the magazines.
He'd probably have a podcast at house of work. I
would hope so. And uh he uh. But he makes
several mention mentions of the penguin, like numerous mentions of penguins,
often describing them as grotesque penguins. And he probably would
(14:13):
have have read about about about Levis thoughts on the penguins.
And I'm probably not the unedited content, but he certainly
makes reference to Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition in the story. Yeah,
and if I remember correctly, in that story, those penguins
were somewhat gigantic, right, there was something to do with that.
They were sort of like prehistoric holdover penguins. And we know,
(14:35):
I believe from what I've I've read an other research
instances that that's a thing that that penguins did used
to be considerably larger than they are now. Yeah, I
almost feel like they come off more repellent in that
story than like the show goths. Oh yeah, they're they're
they're terrifying. Um. So let's move on to reptiles. Yeah.
(14:58):
So we've got a bunch of exa amples of of
reptiles in action performing necrophilia. And one of the first
ones that I found was from an article called It
was published this year called corpse Bride Irresistible. A dead
female tagu lizard courted by males for two days at
(15:19):
an urban park in southeastern Brazil. It's very specific that title.
I love the pool quote on this one from a
zoologist who observed this act and process. It's very similar
to the to the Mallard duck. This guy just sat
there and watched quote. I felt a sense of wonder, Well,
I'll go through this and then we can hit upon
some of the other lizards he provided a very detailed
(15:40):
account of what happened here with this tagu lizard. Apparently,
it mounted a recently dead female, gained hold by biting
the skin of her neck and attempting to mate with her.
The same male just kept biting the neck and rubbing
its left hind limbs on her body. And then this
basically was like I think a two day dead female.
(16:01):
So it wasn't, you know, as it wasn't similar to
the Mallard case where it'd like just happened. Um. Then
another smaller male came by and also held the neck
of it, and they seems to be, you know, biting
seems to be a major part of tagu lizard sex practice,
because they just were opening their jaws kind of biting
(16:22):
and putting their mouths around the whole head of this animal. Uh.
And then after a while it ceased its attempts, and
he this is exactly from his his figure description. The
male tongue flicked the female's head and scratched her hind
bodies with the right hind limb. So there you have it,
necrophilia between tagu lizards. I love though about this case.
(16:46):
One of the things I love about this case is
that the analysis of what's happening here goes deeper than
just oh, it's a stupid animal and it made a
stupid mistake and tried to mate with something that it
cannot mate with. They they point out that, first of all,
lizards of course cold blooded creatures. So it's not uh
so the creature that it's attempting to have sex with
(17:06):
though dead, uh you know, it's it's ambient body heat.
The body heat is essentially going to be that of
the ambient air, and uh pheromones are still going to
be in play even though it's dead. So there are
there are enough signals saying yes, I'm alive for the
you know, the dominating male to then come in and
try and do its thing. Yeah. I think that's an
(17:27):
important thing to distinguish here as well, too, is like,
consider that these animals are relying on senses that they
are very different than ours to distinguish what's what's available
and what's alive. I'm thinking it's probably less like, um,
you know, if if a human were to go to
a bar and try to chat up someone who's just
a corpse just propped up. Yeah, it's more like if
(17:47):
you're driving down the interstate and you see a sign
for a gas station and you pull in to get gas.
It said gas station. You know, pull the car up,
actually get out to fill up, and then realize that
the place is closed, exactly like the existing signs. The
major signs that we care about in this rather simplistic
ordeal are saying yes, we're open for business, when in
the fact the lizards dead. It's possible this table lizard
(18:10):
didn't even realize it at all, you know, even even afterwards.
It sounded like the same with a mallard. We've also
got this with another reptile, the Amazonian frog. I'm gonna
have trouble pronouncing this Latin name, right, ryan Ella probuscda. Yes,
And this one is fabulous because, as a two thirteen
(18:31):
study reveals, this is functional necrophilia. This is something that
pretty much every other organism out there, it's an impossibility
because necrophilia. We've often discussed this, we've discussed it so
far in lizards and birds. It's a mistake that cannot
possibly work. But in this frog, in proboscidia here are proboscidia, uh,
(18:56):
we actually see reproduct occurring through necrophilia, right, So they
extract eggs from their dead sexual partners, right, and and
then they fertilize them. They don't fertilize them and then
extract them. Right. This is so how this happened. And
it's not not to say they primarily or only reproduced
(19:18):
through neck, but on the table as as as a
viable option. So the males form a big mating ball
they make, you know, consist of you know, dozens of frogs,
and they're all just ready to go. And then along
comes a female and they essentially all began fighting on
top of her for the rights to mate with her.
And in some of the cases, she ends up drowning
(19:41):
at the bottom of this uh, this mating ball, um,
you know, and so it ends up with you end
up with cases where um. Researchers, particularly in this case,
uh Thiago Izzo from Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research.
He's analyzing the results of this breeding. He finds counting, yeah,
he's counting him like a hundred males to twenty dead
(20:03):
females in one in another one fifty males and five
dead females. But then when he starts dissecting the females,
there are no eggs. So he's trying to figure out
where did the eggs go, how did this what could
have possibly happened, and then he observed the act itself. Yeah,
and so like from what I had read that there's
(20:25):
this is unique I believe to this particular kind of frog.
But that one of the one of the articles that
I read on this, which was called necrophiliac behavior in
the career U toad, which is a different kind of toad,
but it also references this instance. It says that it's
been documented that in all groups of terrestrial tetrapods that
(20:47):
this kind of uh necrophilia happens, and that the basically
scientists just account for it as a lack of proper
recognition by males during reproductive season. So in in this
case with the Probisidia, that sounds like they do recognize
it though, and they say, okay, we've got to take
these eggs so that you know something actually happens with it. Yeah,
(21:09):
or at least they've they've reached the point in their
evolution to where it still works. So it's I mean,
it's it's been selected. Um, because Yeah, what happens is
the male squeeze the dead female's body the eggs pop out,
the male quickly fertilizes the eggs, and then they eventually
develop into healthy embryos. So like, where do they where
do they put these eggs while they're fertilizing. They just
have like a storage area. I got the impression from
(21:35):
from being the paper that they just kind of pop
out and it's just done. The beat is done right there. Okay,
So it's just like the egg is next to the
corpse of the female frog. Okay, Okay, I guess I
was imagining something a little bit more fantastic where these
like hundreds of bearded them away. Yeah, these rugs are
bringing these these these eggs back to their layer. I
(21:55):
believe Izzio did. Um he did observe like and when
at least one of the cases of the frog moving
the body to a location where he would be able
to have his way with it undisturbed by the other
other male frogs. All right, but but yeah, the fascinating
thing here is that it's believed that this provides a
reproductive advantage to both the deathborate outnumbered male who can't
(22:17):
get his hands on a live mate, as well as
the dead female because you know, even in her case
she's died through this rather brutal breathing process, but she's
still going to be able to fulfill the genetic mission. Yeah,
that is the fascinating part. And certainly, uh, it seems like,
at least in all the examples that we have here
(22:38):
of animals, that that reproduction is still the goal, right that, Like,
that's what seems to be going on in the heads
of these mallards or these frogs or teng google lizards
or penguins or whatever. And it makes me wonder too.
Like I said at the top, I'm sure there are
many other instances of other animals in the wild that
(22:58):
have done this, and he means have probably already documented it.
But like our friend with the penguins, they maybe don't
want to get that research. That's that's not the first
paper they're going to submit for publication, right, right, Yeah,
I get the impression that it's it's kind of an
understudied area of human behavior, but but certainly there's any Yeah,
certainly an understudied area of of animal behavior, but but
(23:21):
there's some there's some interesting work there. Nonetheless, so I
believe that this frog is a perfect way for us
to transition into human necrophiles. Um. Now, before we get
into anything to disturbing though, um, we should remind you
that like, basically human necrophilia can be achieved in a
(23:43):
way that is far less ethically sketchy and horrendous and
you know and on a front to the gods, etcetera.
And that is of course in the form of posthumous
sperm retrieval and posthumous egg retrieval, which is similar to
the frogs that we were just speaking exactly. Like, it's like,
basically it's the frog scenario carried out, um, you know,
(24:04):
far less brutally in human culture. Uh, the same thing
that the frog has been it has evolved to deal with.
Human technology allows us to do the same thing to
remove viable sperm or egg from a brain dead or
even recently the deceased individual and then utilize it uh
(24:26):
in reproduction in a in a healthy body. Yeah. I
had never heard of this before this before researching this episode,
but it seems perfectly plausible to me, and I could
sort of understand the motivation for some people as well. Yeah,
it's not you know, it's not it's almost a disservice
to call it necro to refer to it all as
necrophilia because it's it's certainly not you know, an abuse
(24:47):
of a body. It's there are allowed. There's some ethical
concerns and you know, most of them concerned legality and
consent of the individual whose reproductive material is being taken.
But but at at heart it is a reproductive act
occurring between a living individual and a dead individual. Almost
(25:07):
like when we're going back to that bacteria, right, they're
similarly mention line with the bacterial model that we discussed earlier. Um.
And we've had this technology for a little bit. Um. Yeah,
we've we've been carrying out the posthumous sperm retrieval for
a while, and in two thousand eleven we actually saw
the the the first um use of of of effective
(25:30):
posthumous egg retrieval. There's a paper with a kind of
horrible title, um that came out two twelve Michigan State
Law Review, Dying to be many using intentional parenthood as
a proxy for consent in posthumous egg retrieval case. Yeah,
that definitely sounds like something that I've noticed. That's a
that's a law article to Michigan State Law Review. It
(25:52):
sounds like a case of using a title to UM
kind of kind of make it a little bit more
sexy so it's more attractive to the publishers. Yeah, it was.
It feels a little weird, but but I mean at
hard it's I think it's a very sensible, UM, very
sensible procedure to carry out, provided you consent is clear
and established. You know, you have a sudden death that
(26:13):
occurs between two people who who want to uh to
have offspring, and here is a scientific way of achieving that.
And it sounds like this article was specifically about uh
an example in Israel where magistrates set a legal precedent
for this um for the harvesting and freezing of a
posthumous human being sax. Yeah, and I know some of
(26:34):
you are probably wondering, well, how how dead UH can
the individual be? I did find some stats on sperm
retrieval from a from two thousand six paper uh into
titled a Posthumous Sperm Retrieval Analysis of Time Interval to
Harvest Sperm and this is published in the journal Human Reproduction.
It said, quote, viable sperm is obtainable with ps R.
(26:57):
That's posthumous sperm retrieval well after the currently recommended twenty
four hour time interval PSR should be considered up to
thirty six hours after death following appropriate evaluation. No quote,
no correlation was found between cause of death and chance
for successful sperm retrieval. So that's sperm in particular, not
not not eggs. Yeah, okay, Yeah, So I wonder if
(27:18):
there's a paper out there that's about the time limits
on eggs as well. Yeah, I wonder if it's, uh,
if it's if it's about the same, or or maybe
it's if there's a little shorter. I'm not sure that.
If anybody out there knows, please tell us. Yeah, yeah,
we'll throw that information in there. Um. So this seems
like the moment for us to go down what probably
most of you thought you were going to be hearing
(27:39):
when you clicked on an episode that had necrophilia in
the title, which and we're going to call it classic necrophilia.
This is what you think of when you hear that word. Yeah,
and this is you know, if you want to get
off the train at this point, this is your stop,
because it's all human necrophilia from here. Yeah, this is
where it gets a bit spooky, but not as you know,
(27:59):
what I'm going to qualify that not as not as
a spooky or creepy as I thought it was going
to be. I mean, especially once you crunch the examples
that we've gone through already kind of demystifies and you know,
de horrifies the situation and that I find And there's
even some aspects of the human psychology that I can
I don't relate to or identify with, but I can
(28:21):
I can sympathize with with somebody, for instance, who misses
their dead loved one, which seems to be one of
the examples. We'll get into that, but I think what
we should really start with is is this one paper
that came out in seven which seems to be cited
in all of the research that's done on the psychology
(28:42):
of necrophilia. It is called Sexual Attraction to Corpses. A
Psychiatric Review of Necrophilia, is written by Jonathan P. Rossman
and Philip J. Resnick Uh And basically, these guys explored
a hundred and twenty two cases of necrophilia and they
found what is the eighty eight of them were from
world literature and thirty four were unpublished cases. What I
(29:04):
want to know and I actually downloaded the whole article.
I gotta go back through and look at the methodology.
I don't think they explained it in there though. Where
where do you get these cases? It's they make it
sound like you just go to the library and you're like, yes,
I would like all of the world literature cases on necliphilia. Please. Yeah.
I don't recall seeing that specified in the paper either.
But but you know, they had a lot to two
(29:26):
on they did, and they they used it to basically
create some categorizations, some classifications of types of necrophilia. Right,
so we've got and they came up with three. Whether
first of all, they're two, they're they're sort of a
line in the stand that they draw initially between necrophilia
and pseudo necrophilia, and pseudo necrophilia is you know, this
(29:49):
consists of of transient attraction to human corpses, but it's not.
But it with with these individuals with pseudo necrophiliacs, sex
with the corps is not the central part of their fantasies.
They're primarily interested in living sexual partners. But you know
they're they're not averse to uh to to going after
(30:10):
something dead. This group includes uh sadistic opportunistic and transitory
cases of necrophilia. And again, like let's distinguish here. Necrophilia
is the desire to have sex with a dead body,
not the act of having sex with a dead body.
Some of these lead to that, obviously, but some of
these necrophilix that they're referring to in the literature didn't
(30:31):
act upon their fantasies. Yeah, Like I could see someone
being tricked and being classified as a pseudo necrophiliac, you know,
like they have a drink in them and you're just
talking to them instead, would you, And under these circumstances,
and then eventually they break and say well, I don't know, maybe,
and then and then all of a sudden they're in
study on necrophilia. That's where they got them all. So okay,
(30:56):
the first one is the first categorization that they came
up with is I think what a lot of people
think of when they hear the word necrophilia, but they
categorize it as a type called necrophilic homicide. So what
we're talking about here this is sort of the Jeffrey
Dahmer model of an individual murders somebody in order to
(31:19):
obtain a corpse for their necrophilic fantasies, and from from
what I was reading about Dahmer, and I mean, that's
a whole another rabbit hole that we could go down
for the other episode. And I think Ted Bundy also
partook in this, but that the idea was that those
those men could not uh feel sexual pleasure unless the
(31:40):
part of their quote unquote partner it's a terrible word
for it, in this situation was was dead or at
least like de humanized, and to a significant degree because
I believe Dahmer tried to create essentially zombies out of
by drilling into their their skull. But but it kind
of comes down to the same thing. They need needed
a person devoid of will, and the easiest way to
(32:05):
achieve that is, of course to kill the individual. Yeah,
the key here seems to be that what these people
are looking for is a partner who is quote and
this is from the text unresisting and unrejecting. So I
don't know necessarily that it's like it. Maybe it is
in some cases that the act of killing sort of
(32:26):
sexualizes the situation. But what they're looking for is somebody
who won't reject them, and somebody who isn't going to
resist them. Right, we'll break down more on the motives
for all these cases. Yeah, And one fact that I
wanted to throw out there that wasn't in these studies
but was another study came out was this woman Michelle
Stein from the John J. College of Criminal Justice in
(32:47):
New York. She reviewed two hundred and eleven sexual homicides
and she found that only eight percent of those involved necrophilia.
So when we're talking about you know, sexual deviancy, sexual
prime and necrophilia, it's actually quite rare. I mean, first
of all, these these deviant situations are rare, That's why
(33:07):
we call them deviant. But then also that within that structure,
the actual act of sex with a dead body is
fairly rare as well. Within within these uh criminal acts, Yeah,
I mean you also can imagine the ven diagram right
of the of the the psychotic murder or wentless murder,
(33:27):
and the type of individual who would want sexual contact
with a dead bye. Yeah, it seems as such, and
I think that, yeah, the ven diagram sliver is probably
fairly small. So don't listen to this episode and think,
oh my god, they're everywhere that that's not the case,
at least from what the research says. Now, the next
classification under a genuine necrophilia is a regular necrophilia, and
(33:50):
this is I like to think that this is the
scavenger approach, entitling the use of entailing the use of
an already dead body for sex, so, um, you know
it's will explore late are a lot of this happens
to to line up with one's job. You're in a
job where you're in close contact with dead bodies and
the opportunity simply presents itself. Yeah. Yeah, And I suspect
(34:12):
that that is probably the situation. Referring back to the
sexual homicides and the necrophilia like sort of numbers, I
suspect that this is a bit more common, actually far
more common. I think it's extremely rare to have somebody
like a Jeffrey Dahmer type. And then the third one
that they categorize and this is sixty eight percent of
(34:35):
the people that they categorize as necrophiliacs is necrophilic fantasy.
So this is basically getting back to the pseudo necrophilia.
This is the idea that it's a it's a fantasy
they have of having sex with a corpse, but they
don't actually do it um and they sort of I
think that, and by day I mean that the researchers
here think that these necrophiles often choose occupations that will
(34:58):
put them in can attact with corpses. So I don't know,
working in a morgue or a hospital or maybe a
grave digger, I don't know, Yeah, hospitals, graves in some cases.
You know, we'll look at some of the stats in
a bit. I think like clerics and even soldiers come up. Basically,
any kind of profession you can imagine in which you
would find yourself in proximity to a dead body. And
(35:21):
here's a couple of numbers to break this down of
the necrophiles wanted to be reunited with the dead partner.
So this is the one that I was saying earlier
that I can sort of not that I would participate
in this, like my wife died or something like that,
but I can I feel emotion for these people who
are so saddened by the loss of their life partner
(35:44):
that they fantasize. They're not even actually acting upon it,
they're just fantasizing about being reunited with them. It reminds
me of the old Irish ballad that particularly Shane O'Connor
did a version of this, and also Dead Can Dance
to the Fact was version of this, I'm stretched on
your grave and will lie there forever about someone who's
(36:05):
lost their beloved and there just lying on their grave. Yes,
very modeling. Sounds quite light with my experience with Irish
folk songs that kind of attitude, and I think all
of us can relate to it on at least that
level of sorrow. I think um, okay, fift percent of
(36:25):
them were just attracted to corpses. Twelve percent had a
power trip over this, right, so twelve percent of the
people that they looked at saw that they very much
like how we think about I think sexual assault is
that it's a power strategy more than it is a
sexual uh motivated crime. You know, I can't help but
particularly in the whole idea about being attracted to corpses,
(36:47):
I can't help but think of individuals growing up in
the age of VHS, you know where you know, nowadays,
if someone has access to the Internet, they can find
just about an the example of sexual activity they want. Sure,
you know, if the appropriate supervision isn't there. But when
I was growing up, Like the easiest way to to
(37:09):
see uh, you know more kind of adult content was
through horror movies and science fiction movies. You know. So
you know, you're not gonna go to the video store
and rent something, you know, from the adult section, but
you can certainly rent alien. You can rent rent a
Return of the Living Dead, which of course has a
naked zombie in it. So, like, I wondered to what
it's you know, that's an important time in one sexual
(37:31):
there's a there's a culturals like guyst around that that's
somewhat maybe encourages such fantasies. I wonder. Yeah, like because
imagine there are a lot of people out there who
have their you know, their their sexual development kind of
crosses into this horror genre and then and there they
just sort of burned their mind or various sexy zombies,
(37:53):
you know, like what and that's been a trope for
at least the last couple of years. Is the whole
zombie thing turned into a boom? I think there was
a lot of like, let's make cash off of this
by making those zombie zombies sexy as well. Yeah, um
so this makes me think of you know, it's no
surprise to the listeners. Both Robert and I are big
horror fans. I was on Bloody Disgusting I think it
(38:15):
was Bloody Disgusting, which is a you know, horror fan website,
the other day and they had a list of, like
I think it was like the top ten scenes of
necrophilia in horror movies, uh, you know, overall, And I
was shocked that there were so many. And then as
I kind of went through it, I went, oh, some
of these are actually like tasteful movies that tasteful horror
(38:37):
movies that had, you know, a scene that had to
do with the the character of the plot. It wasn't
just thrown in there to be shocking or to you
know Garner, you know, cult status. I guess yeah, growing up,
I remember, we're not growing up. It was more like college.
I remember hearing about Necromantic. I think it was a
German film. Yeah, it's like kind of a video nasty classification,
(39:00):
you know, banned a lot of places. I never saw it,
but it was. It's it's kind of I think it's
held up there as one of the earlier that might
have been on the list. I'm trying to remember some
of them I'm sure a d and Twenty Days of
Sawdom was on there. Um, but I've never seen that
slou And I believe there's I believe there's necrophilia and that.
Um god, I don't remember. I actually saw it in
(39:23):
the last year for the first time. Yeah, because one
of our coworkers owns it. U because I mean, it's uh,
I'm gonna have fun guessing who that is later, But
it's uh. I mean, it's it's an interesting film, and
that it is highly controversial, but it's it's uh, it's
artistically well made. It's it's a work of troubling art. Yeah,
(39:43):
like the I mean the director was stabbed to death
shortly after it. I didn't know that really, And it's
it's a I ended up not watching it in full, Like,
I just could not watch a lot of it. I
never saw it. But I remember when I was in college,
I had a girlfriend who was in a film class
and they had a signed say Low as something that
they had to watch for class, and she was mortified. Um,
(40:06):
and just I don't I don't think she was able
to make it through. It was you know, probably part
of the class was a part of the exercise was
to see whether or not people could make it through
that movie. Getting back to the actual you know, necrophilic fantasies,
power trips come into it as you as you would
suspect um. And then you know, as we referred to earlier,
(40:26):
that the homicidal necrophiliacs. That's again only twelve percent of
the cases they surveyed. So it's quite a small sliver.
Twelve percent out of what what are these guys? They
had a hundred and twenty two cases. And then with
the other case, it was out of two hundred and
eleven sexual homicides, it was only eight percent that involved necrophilia. Okay,
(40:48):
So one last part to this study that they did,
they also developed a model to help understand what kind
of events led to these you know, psychological categorizations, and
this is what they found. They found four um as
you would imagine, poor self esteem, largely due to a
significant loss in their life. Um. So that would probably
bring us back to the you know, who wanted to
(41:10):
be reunited with their dead partners. Uh. As you would expect,
they're usually male, uh And there are men who have
a fear of being rejected by women. And so as
we discussed earlier, they desire a sex sex object that
is incapable of rejecting them. The third is that they
some of them actually have like a fear of the dead.
(41:31):
They're scared of being around dead bodies, and this like
as a way of conquering that, I suppose transform It
transforms that fear into a desire um, which I think
is fairly common transition, not necessarily with dead bodies. I
think most people don't experience it on that level. But
being afraid of something is also titillating, you know. That's
(41:55):
why we watch horror movies exactly. Uh. And then the
last one is just you know, the the fantasy of
some It sometimes begins after you've just had your first
exposure to a corpse, whether that's you know, as a
child or an adult. Um. Yeah, it's a shocking and
and and and it makes an impact absolutely. Uh. So
(42:15):
there is there's there's a there's another pretty widely cited
study by a guy named I believe this is pronounced
a nil Agra wall uh and he he published this
in two thousand nine, and I I believe from what
I saw was that this was used to subsequently create
(42:36):
a new DSM entry on necrophilia and his His study
was called a New Classification for Necrophilia, was published in
the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine in two thousand nine,
and he came up with ten categories. Okay, we'll go
through these. First up, role players, people who get aroused
from pretending their live partner is dead during sexual activity. Okay.
(42:58):
And then we have romantic necrophilia acts. These are these
are what we were discussing before, bereaved people who remain
attached to their dead lover's body, so they're you know,
this is about sorrow. Then the number three necrophiliac fantasize.
There's people who fantasize about necrophilia but never actually have
sex with a corpse. And there's tactile necrophiliacs, people who
are aroused by touching or just stroking a corpse without
(43:21):
engaging an intercourse. I seem to remember that there was
an extremely creepy episode of that TV show Millennium where
there was a guy who that was his particular thing
was just like showing up to funerals and pretending to
be a friend of the family just so I could
touch the corps. Number five is a fetishistic necrophiliacs. These
are people who remove objects or body parts, even from
(43:42):
a corpse, for sexual purposes, but without engaging an intercourse. Okay,
and then as you as you can see where kind
of this this list is getting worse as we're progressing.
Uh necro mutual omaniacs. These are people, I know that
sounds like a made up thing, but this is actually
sounds like for sure, people who derive pleasure from mutilating
a corpse while masturbating but not engaging in intercourse. Number
(44:08):
seven Opportunistic necrophiliacs. These are people who normally have no
interest in necrophilia, but they if they have the opportunity,
they're going to take it. So yeah, I mean, I
don't I'm having a really hard time imagining this scenario
where this would happen. But I guess when you're left
alone with a dead body for some reason and yeah,
I don't know, maybe you're maybe you're performing an autopsy
(44:30):
or something. I'm not sure. Uh, regular NECROPHILIAX. That's people
who preferably, you know, just want to have sex with
the dead. So kind of back to that other model
that we talked about before, Like they would even probably
tell you look I'm not one of those exciting kind
of necrophiles. I'm just old school necrophile. Uh. And they're
(44:51):
again they're not killing people, right, let's be clear about that.
That's the next one. Yeah. Number nine is homicidal necrophiliacs
that we've discussed already, people who want to who want
to commit in order to have sex with the dead.
And then there is the tenth one, which is exclusive necrophiliacs,
people who have an exclusive interest in sex with the
dead and cannot perform at all for living partners. Now,
(45:13):
this is what I think they categorized Jeffrey dahmeraz that
like in his case, this was the only way that
he could perform to have any kind of sexual gratification,
and subsequently led to him both being homicidal necrophiliac and
exclusive necrophiliac. Now, I have some other stats here just
to roll through from that Rossman and Resnick paper, just
(45:34):
to give you a little more idea about who necrophiles
are and uh in why they do what they do.
Sex in that study were male. Um, yeah, and I
found one rare female case was cited. Uh, And I
didn't have the time to be able to look up
the case study on this, but her name was Karen
green Lee, so apparently she's a well known female necrophiliacy.
(45:58):
The mean age was thirty four, which makes sense. You know,
you need to be young enough to get around and
not have anything tying you down, but also your sexual
appetite needs to have had time to reach this point
right right, And also probably you would need to be
you know, as we know about like them taking employment
in situations that put them to your dead bodies, you
(46:19):
would need to be of age in order to kind
of have a job like that. Um, next up i Q.
And this is really interesting because there's there has long
been and still kind of remains, the stereotype of the
necrofile as being essentially, you know, mentally deficient, that they're
you know, almost like the example of a stupid reptile
just engaging with this because they don't know anymore better.
But in uh in Rosmann Resnics paper, they point out
(46:42):
that all of the individuals that they profiled had i
q s above eighty and sixty nine percent had i
qs above a hundred and just to put that frame
of reference, normal to average intelligence is nine two d
and nine. So these for the most part we're not
dealing with the with unintelligent individuals. This isn't technically like
(47:05):
a disability and mental disability. This is deviant behavior. And
among true necrophiles, s percent had i q s above
a hundred um. Sixty percent of the cases there was
a prior history of statistic acts. Uh. Sexual orientation attention
was pretty much comparable to the general population sent heterosexual,
thirteen bisexual, nine percent homosexual. There is not really surprising
(47:30):
um underlying mental problems. This is interesting because this also
gets into the idea that not only this preconceived notion
that necrophiles are all going to be both mentally deficient
and crazy. Only seventeen percent were psychotic, eleven percent among
true necrophiles had personality of disorders had unusual belief systems,
(47:52):
though seventy percent seventy three of pseudo necrophiles did, which
you know, makes sense. If you're fantasizing about sex with
the dead, you probably have, you know, a different worldview
from your average Yeah, that's fair. Of those pseudo necrophiles
consumed alcohol compared to forty of true necrophiles, So I
(48:14):
guess that's just I wonder what they mean by that.
If it's like alcoholism or just you know, they they did,
they didn't imbibe at all. It kind of I guess
I kind of think of it in terms of, you know,
I'm gonna need a drink for this. Um. So maybe
the true necrophiles you actually don't see as much alcohol
(48:35):
consumption because it is like they are, they're kind of
enough in the necrophilia camp that there's no need for
liquid courage, Whereas if it's just your fantasy, then maybe
it's the kind of thing that you have to decompress
to get down to the point where you're fantasizing about it,
you know. Well. And then fifty seven percent of necrophiles
(48:57):
were found to be in an employed profession that gave
them access to dead bodies. We've got a list here,
hospital orderlies, more attendant, cemetery employees, funeral parlor workers, and
as you said earlier, clerics and soldiers. I found two
other studies that I feel like I need to be mentioned,
but I'm a little dubious of the reporting here, and
(49:21):
I'd like to see some more research or maybe if
anybody out there has experienced with this kind of research
or psychological experience, maybe they can tell us what they think.
But these two studies basically connected the symptoms of necrophilia
to both autism and asperger syndrome. Both these studies came
out in twleven and basically it seemed like their conclusions
(49:43):
were drawn from the fact that there was a similar
lack of empathy between those with Asperger's and those who
were interested in necrophilia. Uh, that was about it, um.
One of them, one of these studies said that they
they suggested something called autistic psychopathy lead to experimentation with chemistry, poisons,
(50:06):
and killing, which subsequently they kind of tied into necrophilia. Uh.
These studies were the first one is called necrophilia and
autistic psychopathy and the other one is necrophilia and serial killers.
Is there evidence for Asperger's syndrome? So, I mean this
is published research. I wanted to mention it, but I'm
also a little wary of making a connection between these
(50:29):
two different kind of mental states just based on the
lack of empathy. Yeah, I mean, there are only two
studies and it's such a a hotbed um topic that
I would uh yeah, I would hate to spend too
much time on it, but you know, hey, if we
see more more papers come out. Um, you know, maybe
we'll come back to it now. Another interesting thing about
(50:51):
necrophilia is when you get into illegal issues involved here,
because of course corpses are not really people, right, So
these are crimes that often fall through the cracks unless
there's a specific necrophilia law on the books, and without
such a law in place, it often proves difficult to
prosecute uh necrophiles. Yeah, and so this is, you know,
(51:13):
something that I guess I never thought about and sort
of assumed would be on the books. But obviously it's yeah, exactly.
But there was a case, you know, kind of one
of the leading cases was in Wisconsin in two thousand six. Uh.
It turned out there was a case where three men
were caught while they were trying to exhume a dead
woman for sex. Uh. The men admitted to it, but
(51:33):
another reason they know is that they brought a box
of condoms. I remember this. I think I blogged about it.
That's where I read about it. It was you were
the source for this one for me. But so what
ended up happening was technically their lawyers argued there was
no crime committed because there was no law on the
books that said that it was against the law. So
(51:54):
this prompted Wisconsin Supreme Court two years later in two
thousand eight, to finally decide on a law that forbid
copulating with the deceased. So that's one example. I'm sure
there are many other examples, but it's one of those
things where I guess, like, until it actually happens and
they need to prosecute, they don't put it on the books. Yeah,
are you going to be the weird politician who brings
(52:16):
up just necrophilia laws when there's no apparent need, right, Yeah,
that's gonna kill your presidential aspects. Incidentally, that blog post
was one of the first ones I did for How
Stuff Works right after we started the blogs, and and
it was like immediately they had to hide it because
they were like, I don't know, there are a lot
of eyes in the blog. Let's not have this be
(52:37):
one of the top posts. That's too bad. I liked it. Well. Uh.
One of the other things that came out of this
when I was looking at the research here, is specifically
about the legality is many of the families who are
involved with incidents like this where a family member's corpse
is a victim of necrophilia. They have a problem of
(53:00):
it because they sort of psychologically think of the corpse
as being their property. Right, So, like, as you're saying before, yes,
it's not technically a living human being, some people would
probably argue, I wouldn't. This is a victimless crime, right,
But uh, it's not in that that the family members
see this as being their loved one and technically property
(53:23):
even though it's not a living person. Yeah, it kind
of comes down to just what a somewhat a complicated
area it occupies in our in our understanding of of
our life and our our biological life, even because it's
it's that it's our loved one, but it's not our
loved one. It's that it's a person, but it's not
really a person. Still. Yeah, And I mean, like I
(53:44):
said at the beginning, to you know, this is considered
to be the ultimate transgression in our culture, one of them. Uh,
and therefore it's something that we both have a hard
time talking about in sort of empirical terms like we're
trying to do today, or in legal terms. And then
at the same time, it's so sensationalized that we can't
(54:07):
seem to stop talking about it. Whenever it comes up. Right,
I'm sure if you googled Wisconsin necrophilia, there's probably two
hundred newspaper articles out there from two thousands six when
this happened. You know, everybody was covering it that week. Yeah,
and then yet when you start thinking about it, it's
like if you have a deranged individual and if they
were to you know, put the question to you, Hey,
(54:28):
I'm going to do one of two things this weekend.
Which should I do? Should I dig up a corpse
and copulate with it, or should I kill somebody? Or
should I even just assault somebody? Like obviously you're gonna
pick the corpse one because it is in a sense
of the victim was crime. Yeah, I would probably, uh,
you know, call the police. Well, yes, that's the correct
(54:50):
that's the correct answer, you know, even if it's a
covering myself legally here, No matter how good of a friend.
I always when I think about this topic now, I
always come back to Cornt McCarthy's novel Child of God,
where the central character, Lester Ballard is a necrophile. Okay,
I haven't read that. It's it's exceedingly good. It's one
of those books I keep coming back to Um, because
(55:13):
it's this character is a very dark character, but you're
so close to him in the book. You do sympathize
with his with it, with his his psyche to a
large extent. It's it's so so very well presented. I
think in I was trying to think of fictional examples
for this episode. The only one I can remember is,
(55:35):
do you remember that Marquis Assad movie that had Jeffrey
Rush playing the Marquis Assad. I remember when it came out,
but I've never seen it in full. There's I believe
a scene in that in which Joaquin Phoenix engages in
necrophilia with Kate Winslet's corpse um And I think, you know, obviously,
because it's about the Marquis Assad, there's a certain amount
(55:56):
of of bacchanalia to the whole ring, right, Um. But
it's but it's if I remember the plot correctly. It's
been a long time since I've seen that movie. I
believe it was because like he was grieving for her
and they were, you know, sort of in love. Interesting.
I should maybe see it at some point. I've read that.
I don't remember it being bad. I've read the sod
(56:18):
I find him to be a fascinating character. Yeah, yeah,
I think he's interesting in small doses. I have a
hundred and twenty Days of Sodom, and I can only
read like maybe like two or three pages. I see,
I tried to read the whole thing. The problem with
a hundred twenty days is that, um, it's basically incomplete,
and so the further you get into the book, it
eventually breaks down into just an outline of what he
(56:40):
intended to finish. Yeah, I think they were originally published
the unreadable pamphlets, Is that right, like a series of pamphlets.
I think that. I think it's the one that he
secretly wrote in a prison cellf So it was it was,
it was hidden away for a while, but I never
officially finished. So it's just in terms, and not only
it's the content often to fficult to read, but it
(57:01):
becomes increasingly unreadable as a word, because it's just a
complete Yeah. Well yeah, that's mine market assad and you've
got Cormac McCarthy to have literally great, it's a great book. Um.
James Franco made a movie version, which I've heard good
things about. I'll probably never see it, just because it's
it's a book I love so much. I have such
(57:22):
a crystal you know, it's a kind of mar your
imaginary Yeah, but I hear good things, so you know,
maybe our you know, listeners out there who aren't is
into uh into reading reading, want to just you know,
see a film, maybe check it out. If it's true
to the book, then it'll it'll do. It does a
good job. So there you have it, one from the vaults,
(57:44):
one we're really proud of, and one that we thought
everyone wouldn't it would either not mind listening to a
second time, or you know, here's a chance to discover
it for the first time. If you're a new or listener. Yeah,
and if you've got some thoughts that you want to
share with us now about necrophilia and what you learned
in this episode, don't forget to write us at blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
(58:13):
on this than batands over. Their topics is that how
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.