The Science of Necrophilia

Don't run away! True enough, this 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

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. And
you did read the title right. This is our necrophilia episode.

(00:24):
So we want to throw out just a couple of
quick disclaimers before we move forward. Um, not everything in
this episode is going to deal with human necrophilia, but
a lot of it does. So there is some some
of the information we're covering here is going to be
a little sexual in nature. Um, certainly graphic, certainly graphic,

(00:44):
and a little at least a little disturbing. Now we're
you know, we're not gonna go all in on the details.
You know, we're gonna keep it reasonable here, but still
we're just gonna throw that disclaimer out there. So proceed,
Uh maybe not at your own risk, but hey, you know,
if this is not your thing, that maybe you should
just skip to the next sepisode. Yeah, And I just

(01:04):
want to also acknowledge that, you know, we we didn't
choose this solely to be gross, but that, like there's,
as you will find throughout this episode, there's been a
ton of research into it. But also that human beings
are naturally fascinated by the concept of necrophilia. Uh, and
it seems to be maybe we'll get to the heart
of this by the end of the episode, but because

(01:25):
it's pretty much the ultimate transgression, because you know that
almost anybody that you pose this too is going to
be horrified by it. Yeah. Uh, you know, unless they're
like secret cults of necrophiles that you know, are able
to talk about it with one another. It's pretty much
a solitary habit in human beings. Yeah. And it's and

(01:47):
it occupies such a weird space in our psyche because
it also draws in these elements of this body has
died and this body is no longer the person that
it was, you know. I mean certainly we've spent the
entire to give human history grappling with that. So it's
it's uh, it's it's a troubling topic on several different levels.

(02:09):
But I think I think it's a great topic for
this show because it kind of gets to the heart
of of of something that has to you know, the
science of being human first of all, or of just
being alive in the world. As we're going to discover,
there are lots of animal necrophiles, and that at the
at the heart of it, this is something that happens

(02:29):
on a regular basis, more often than we'd like to think.
But that it, you know, I think for cultural reasons
that we kind of keep taboo and try not to
think about or talk about, Yeah, except except when it happens,
and then the media will exactly feast on it. It
is a it's very click bait, yeah, and that that
is not again, not why we chose to do this. Alright,

(02:52):
So we're gonna start off by just by discussing necrophilia
in the animal kingdom. I mean it 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 it is. I mean, We've got at least

(03:14):
what like five or six examples of different animals that
practice necrophilia today, and I'm sure there are dozens more
out there that have just not been cataloged. In fact,
as we'll find with the penguin, it was and then
that research was redacted basically for cultural reasons. It was
just too shocking to share. I mean, but essentially you

(03:36):
could 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, and often as an accident. But accidents happen,

(03:59):
and 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, and this was one of the things that

(04:19):
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

(04:41):
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
of dealing with death. Um. But of course you have
to sort of define what is sex too before we write,

(05:03):
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

(05:27):
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

(05:50):
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 acterial 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

(06:12):
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 necro file or necrophilia sort

(06:35):
of 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

(06:56):
it's important to include here especially. I think it's a
it's perfect to include a 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,

(07:17):
the Ignoble Prizes, this comes out, 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
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 you know,

(07:40):
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 Moniker Um
who's a Dutch writer and rader of the Natural History

(08:01):
Museum in Rotterdam. Uh and he well, he won this
the paper for his u 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 flights,

(08:26):
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
mail ducks, uh. And that basically what we're looking at

(08:49):
here in this example from Mullicker is that one of
the ducks died midflight, either from injuries to 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 nut. I laughed, a little bit, so it's hard
not you know what. I think it's okay for you
to laugh. I think it's okay for the people listening

(09:11):
to lad you got to have a little bit of
literal gallows you with with this in order to get
through it. Yeah, I mean the artist 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, but yeah, these ducks. Um, it seems like

(09:36):
I didn't get the impression because I read the actual
account for Mulliker. 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 begin to
peck at it and proceed for quite some time. I mean,
he recorded pretty precisely how long everything lasted, and I

(10:00):
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 it really, you know, made a habit of it. Yeah,
And I think That's one of the reasons that the

(10:20):
the paper won the ig Nobel Prize and was so
that 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
there and watched this for let's say seventy five minutes,
and I'm assuming, with like a pad of paper and

(10:42):
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
the mallard and you know, brought it inside, and that
other duck hung around kind of making noises for a

(11:06):
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 an example
of the unflinching gaze of science. Now our next case, though,
is it is more of an example of the the

(11:26):
definitely the Flinch. Yeah. George Murray Levic, Yeah, he was
the medical officer on Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition to
the Soft Pole in nineteen ten, and he recorded the
sexual activity of the Adeli penguins uh in in detail,
and he was he was somewhat shocked by much of

(11:47):
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 that movie
March of the Penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman. I have

(12:09):
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 serve right? No? No, no,
this is like a documentary. This isn't the c g
I happy I think you're thinking of happy Feet that
came from what's his name? Director of Mad Max. So

(12:31):
oh oh yeah, that's right, George Miller, that's true. Yeah. Well, anyway,
for those of you out there who have seen March
of the Penguins, and I think there is a whole
kind of genre of documentary film about penguins. One of
the things that bothered me about that movie at the
time is how much it personified the penguins. And clearly
from reading this like Levick, they must have left some

(12:53):
of the more animalistic behaviors of penguins 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,
there's an article that came out on the BBC in
two thousand twelve titled depray of sex Acts by Penguins
Shock Polar Explorer, and uh it's it's a wonderful little

(13:15):
read on include a link to it on the landing
page for this episode. But uh, there's a quote there. Um,
they interviewed Douglas Russell, who's curator of eggs and nests
at the Natural History Museum, 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.

(13:38):
They are 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 article lays out, George George Murray
Levic In writing about these penguins, was so shocked that
the the stuff about necrophilia, he essentially redacted only some

(14:01):
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, 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

(14:22):
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 they're so brutal
that they accidentally 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,

(14:44):
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 is novella, which I just reread sometime in the
last couple of years, so 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

(15:06):
of his later works. Definitely definitely science fiction. It's it's
a work that he connected a lot of scientific research for.
He was Lovecraft of the guy who if he were
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's probably have a podcast at How Stuff Works, I

(15:26):
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 uh, he probably
would have have read about about about Levis thoughts on
the penguins. I mean, probably not the unedited content, but

(15:46):
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, I believe from what
I've I've read an other research instances that that's a

(16:07):
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 gofs. Oh yeah, they're they're they're terrifying. Um, so
let's move on to reptiles. Yeah. So we've got a
bunch of examples of of reptiles in action performing necrophilia.

(16:31):
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 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

(16:52):
and process. It's very similar to the 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 account of what happened here
with this tagu lizard. Apparently it mounted a recently dead female.

(17:12):
It gained a 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. 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

(17:34):
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 and putting
their mouths around the whole head of this animal. Uh.
And then after a while it's it ceased its attempts

(17:55):
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 tabu lizards. I love though about
this case. One of the things I love about this
case is that the analysis of what's happening here goes

(18:16):
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 point out that, first
of all, lizards of course cold blooded creatures, so it's
not h So the creature that it's attempting to have
sex with, though dead, uh, you know, it's it's ambient
body heat. The body heat is essentially going to be

(18:37):
that of the ambient air, and uh, pheromones are still
going to be in play even though it's dead. So
there 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 important thing to distinguish here as well, too, is like,
consider that these animals are relying on senses they're very

(18:58):
different than ours to distinguish what's what's available and what's alive. Yeah,
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 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

(19:20):
out to fill up, and then realize that the place
is closed. Exactly 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 that the
lizard is dead. It's possible this take Your lizard didn't
even realize it at all, you know, even even afterwards.
It sounded like the same with a mallard. We've also

(19:42):
got this with another reptile, the Amazonian frog. I'm gonna
have trouble pronouncing this Latin name, right, Ryan ella probucda. Yes,
And this one is fabulous because, as a two thirteen
study reveals, this is functional necrophilia. This is something that

(20:04):
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,
we actually see reproduction occurring through necrophilia, right, So they

(20:28):
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 happens. And
it's not not to say they primarily or only reproduced
through neck right, but on the table as as as

(20:48):
a viable option. So the males form a big mating
ball that 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 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
at the bottom of this uh, this mating ball, um,

(21:10):
you know, and so it ends up with you end
up with cases where um. Researchers, particularly in this case,
uh Thiago is a from Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research.
He's analyzing the results of this breeding. He find counting, yeah,
he's counting him like a hundred males to twenty dead
females in one in another one fifty males and five

(21:33):
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
this is unique I believe to this particular kind of frog.

(21:55):
But that one of the one of the articles that
I read on this, which was called necrophiliac behavior in
the career 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
this kind of uh necrophilia happens, and that basically scientists

(22:18):
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,
or at least they've they've reached the point in their
evolution to where it still works. So it's I mean,

(22:41):
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
developed 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
from reading the paper that they just kind of pop

(23:02):
out and it's just done. The deed 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 spirited them away. These drugs are bringing
these these these eggs back to their layer. I believe
Izzio did. Um, he did observe like and when at

(23:25):
least one of the cases, 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.
But but yeah, the fascinating thing here is that it's
believed that this provides a reproductive advantage to both the desperate,
outnumbered male who can't get his hands on a live mate,

(23:45):
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 of animals, that that reproduction is still

(24:07):
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 have done this, and humans have
probably already documented it. But like our friend with the penguins,

(24:30):
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 behavior, yes, yeah, yeah, certainly an understudied area
of animal behavior. But but there's some there's some interesting
work there nonetheless, so I believe that this frog is

(24:52):
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 way that is far less ethically sketchy

(25:13):
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, far less brutally in human culture. Uh, the

(25:35):
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 in reproduction in a in a healthy body. Yeah.
I had never heard of this before this before researching

(25:57):
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 of a body. It's there are a lot
of there's some ethical concerns and you know, most of
them concerned legality and consent of the individual whose reproductive

(26:20):
material is being taken. But but at at heart though
it is a reproductive act occurring between a living individual
and a dead individual, almost like when going back to
that bacteria, right, Yeah, they're simply it's very mention line
with the bacterial model that we discussed earlier. Um. And
we've had this technology for a little bit. Um. Yeah,

(26:43):
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 use of of effective posthumous eggriteval.
There's a paper with a kind of horrible title, um
that came out to two thousand twelve Michigan State Law Review,

(27:03):
Dying to be many using intentional parenthood as a proxy
for consent in posthumous egg rechieval case. Yeah, that definitely
sounds like uh something that I've noticed that's a that's
a law article to Michigan State Law Review. It sounds
like a case of using a title to UM kind
of kind of make it a little bit more sexy

(27:24):
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 know, consent is
clear and established. You know, you have a sudden death
that occurs between two people who who want to uh
to have offspring, and here is a scientific way of

(27:45):
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 sex. Yeah. I know some
of you are probably wondering, well, how how dead UH
can the individual be? I did find some stats on

(28:07):
sperm retrieval from a from two thousand six paper uh
into titled a Posthumous Sperm Retrieval Analysis of Time Interval
to harvest sperm and uh, this is published in the
journal Human Reproduction. It said, quote, viable sperm is obtainable
with PSR. That's posthumous sperm retrieval well after the currently
recommended twenty four hour time interval. PSR should be considered

(28:29):
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,
but not not not eggs. Yeah, okay, yeah, So I
wonder if 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

(28:51):
it's if there's a little shorter. I'm not sure, but
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
when you clicked on an episode that had necrophilia in
the title, and we're going to call it classic necrophilia.

(29:11):
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 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

(29:32):
examples that we've gone through already, kind of demystifies and
you know, de horrifies the situation of it. 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 I can sympathize with with somebody, for instance,
who misses their dead loved one, which seems to be

(29:55):
one of the examples. We'll get into that, Yeah, But
I think what we should really start with is is
this one paper that came out in nine seven which
seems to be cited in all of the research that's
done on the psychology of necrophilia. It is called Sexual
Attraction to Corpses. A Psychiatric review of necrophilia, was written
by Jonathan P. Rossman and Philip J. Resnick Uh and basically,

(30:19):
these guys explored a hundred and twenty two cases of
necrophilia and they found what was the eighty eight of
them were from world literature and thirty four unpublished cases.
What I 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 not they

(30:40):
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 tu 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

(31:02):
they came up with three, where first of all, they're two.
There there's sort of a line in the sand that
they draw initially between necrophilia and pseudo necrophilia. And pseudo
necrophilia is you know, this 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

(31:23):
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 something dead. This
group includes uh sadistic, opportunistic, and transitory cases of necrophilia.
And again, like let's distinguish here. Necrophilia is the desire

(31:46):
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 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
drinking them and you're just talking to them instead the

(32:08):
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, you're in study on necrophilia.
That's where they got them all. So okay, the first
one is the first categorization that they came up with
is I think what a lot of people think of

(32:29):
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 murder somebody in order to obtain a
corpse for their necrophilic fantasies. And from from what I
was reading about Dahmer, and I mean, that's a whole

(32:50):
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 part of their
quote unquote partner's terrible word for it in this situation
was was dead or at least like the humanized in

(33:13):
a to a significant degree, because I believe Dalma 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 needed a person devoid of will,
and the easiest way to achieve that is of course,
to kill the individual. Yeah, the key here seems to

(33:36):
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 sexualizes the situation. But what
they're looking for is somebody who won't reject them and

(33:57):
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 New York. She reviewed two
hundred and eleven sexual homicides and she found that only

(34:18):
eight percent of those involved necrophilia. So when we're talking about,
you know, sexual deviancy, sexual crime, and necrophilia, it's actually
quite rare. I mean, first of all, these these deviant
situations are rare, that's why we call them deviant. But
then also that within that structure, the actual act of

(34:39):
sex with a dead body is fairly rare as well.
Within within these criminal acts, yeah, I mean you also
can imagine the then diagram right of the of the
the psychotic murder or wentless murder and the type of
individual who would want sexual contact with the dead by Yeah,
it seems as such an I think that, Yeah, the

(35:00):
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 this is I like to
think of this is a scavenger approach, entitling the use
of entailing the use of an already dead body for sex.

(35:23):
So um, you know, it's will explore later. 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 that that is probably the situation. Referring
back to the sexual homicides and the necrophilia like sort

(35:45):
of numbers, I suspect that this is a bit more common. Yeah,
actually quite 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 the people that they categorized as necrophiliacs
is necrophilic fantasy. So This is basically getting back to

(36:07):
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 put them in contact with corpses. So I
don't know, working in a morgue or a hospital, or

(36:30):
maybe a grave digger, I don't know, Yeah, hospitals graves
in some cases, will 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 here's a couple of
numbers to break this down. Of the necrophiles wanted to

(36:52):
be reunited with a 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 that they fantasize. They're

(37:13):
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 Shanay O'Connor did a version of this,
and also Dead Can Dance did a fabulous version of this,
I'm stretched on your grave and will lie there forever
about someone who's lost their beloved and there just lying

(37:33):
on their grave. Yes, yes, very modlin. Sounds quite in
live with my experience with Irish folk songs that kind
of attitude, and I think all of us can relate
to it, at least that level of sorrow. I think, um, okay,
fifteen percent of them were just attracted to corpses. Twelve

(37:54):
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, I can't help but think of individuals

(38:17):
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 any example of sexual activity
they want. You know, the appropriate supervision isn't there. But
when I was growing up, like the easiest way to
to see U, you know, more kind of adult content

(38:39):
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,
rent 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 and one
sexual there's a there's a culturals like geist around that

(39:00):
a 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,
you know, Like yeah, and that's been a trope for

(39:21):
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 zombies 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
was Bloody Disgusting, which is a you know, horror fan website,

(39:43):
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 taste full movies, that tasteful
horror movies that had, you know, a scene that had

(40:05):
to do with the the character of the plot. It
wasn't just thrown in there to be shocking or to
you know Garner, uh 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
as a German film. Yeah, it's like kind of a
video nasty classification, you know, banded a lot of places.

(40:28):
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 hundred
and twenty Days of Sodom was on there. Um, But
I've never seen that Salo, and I believe there's I
believe there's necrophilia in that. Um. God, I don't remember.
I actually saw it in the last year for the

(40:49):
first time. Yeah, because one of our coworkers owns it.
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, like the I mean,

(41:10):
the director was stabbed to death shortly after it. I
didn't know that really, and it's a 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 assigned Salo as something that they had to watch
for class, and she was mortified. Um and just I

(41:32):
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. But um, yeah,
So 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,

(41:54):
that upon the cidal necrophiliacs. That's again only twelve percent
of the case as they surveyed, so it's quite a
small sliver. Twelve out of what 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, So one last part to this study

(42:18):
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 be reunited with their dead partners. Uh.

(42:41):
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. They're scared of being around dead bodies,

(43:02):
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,

(43:23):
you know. That's 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.

(43:43):
So 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 a new DSM entry on necrophilia, and his his

(44:08):
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. And then we have romantic necrophiliacs. These

(44:28):
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 engaging an intercourse. I seem to remember that

(44:52):
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 can touch the corps. Number five is a fetishistic necrophiliacs.
These are people who remove objects or body parts, even
from a corpse, for sexual purposes, but without engaging in intercourse. Okay,

(45:15):
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

(45:37):
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

(45:58):
or something. I'm not sure. 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, them
old school necrophile. Uh and they're again they're not killing people, right,

(46:21):
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 want to commit murder 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, this is what I

(46:42):
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 Resonic paper, just to give you a

(47:03):
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

(47:23):
a well known female necrophiliac. Okay. 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

(47:46):
put them in your dead body, as you 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 necrophile
as being essentially, you know, mentally deficient. That there, you know,
almost like the example of a stupid reptile just engaging
with this because they don't know anymore better. But in uh,

(48:07):
in Rossman and Resinus paper, they point out that all
of the individuals that they profiled had i qs above
eighty and sixty nine percent had i q s above
a hundred and just to put that in frame of reference,
normal to average intelligence is ninety two hundred and nine.
So these, for the most part, we're not dealing with

(48:29):
with unintelligent individuals. This isn't technically like a disability and
mental disability. This is deviant behavior. And among true necrophiles,
sent had i q s above a hundred um sixty
percent of the cases there was a prior history of
stadistic acts. Uh. Sexual orientation station was pretty much comparable

(48:51):
to the general population heterosexual thirteen bisexual, nine percent homosexual,
is not really surprising um un a lying 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

(49:16):
disorders had unusual belief systems those seventy percent seventy 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 four percent

(49:39):
of true necrophiles. So I 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 going to need
a drink for this um. So maybe the true necrophiles

(50:01):
you actually don't see as much alcohol 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 were found to

(50:25):
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 I'd like to

(50:50):
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's syndrome. Both these studies came out in
twleven and basically it seemed like their conclusions were drawn

(51:13):
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, and killing,

(51:35):
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 their 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

(51:57):
two different kind of mental it's 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 necrophilia

(52:20):
is when you get into the 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,

(52:41):
something that I guess I never thought about and sort
of assumed would be on the books, but obviously so rare. 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're trying to exhume a dead woman
for sex. Uh. The men admitted to it, but another

(53:02):
reason they know is that they brought a box of condoms.
I remember this, I think I blogged about 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 this prompted

(53:23):
Wisconsin Supreme Court two years later in two thousand and
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

(53:44):
up just necrophilia laws when there's no apparent need, right, Yeah,
that's going to 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

(54:05):
be one of the top post. Oh 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,

(54:27):
they have a problem with 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

(54:49):
loved one and technically property 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,

(55:12):
like I 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

(55:34):
sensationalized that we can't 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,

(55:55):
put the question to you, Hey, 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 it is in a sense it's a victim
was crime. Yeahs not, I would probably uh, you know,

(56:16):
call the police. Well, yes, that's the correct that's the
correct answer, you know, even if it's here, no matter
how good of a friend, I always when I think
about this topic now, I always come back to Cornan
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

(56:39):
coming back to, Um because 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 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

(57:01):
I can remember is, 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

(57:22):
the Marquis Assad, there's a certain amount of of bacchanalia
to the whole thing, 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 I
should maybe see it at some point. I've read. I

(57:43):
don't remember it being bad. I've read Disad. 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 all the time. I see,
I tried to read the whole thing. The problem with
the h is is that, um, it's basically incomplete, and

(58:04):
so the further you get into the book, it eventually
breaks down into just an outline of what he intended
to finish. Yeah. I think they were originally publicly unreadable pamphlets.
Is that right, like a series of pamphlets. I think this.
I think it's the one that he secretly wrote in
a prison self. So it was it was, it was
hidden away for a while, but yeah, never officially finished.

(58:24):
So it's just in terms, and not only is the
content often difficult to read, but it becomes increasingly unreadable
as a word because it's just incomplete. Yeah. Well, yeah
that's mine. Market Assad, and you've got Cormac McCarthy to
have literally greats it's a great book. Um, James Franco
made a movie version, which I've heard good things about.

(58:46):
I'll probably never see it, just because it's it's a
book I love so much. I have such a crystal
it's a kind of marr imaginary. Yeah, but I hear
good things. So you know, maybe our you know, listeners
out there who aren't is into uh in reading reading,
want to 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, all right. So do you

(59:08):
have it? Necrophilia a topic the meaning to get to
for a little bit here and uh, now we have
done it. Now it is cataloged. Yeah, and you know,
like we said throughout the episode, you know, this is
a hugely transgressive topic, both to obviously to engage in,
but even for us to just talk about. I mean,

(59:28):
I think we were a little wary of it, but
this seemed like the appropriate venue to do so. So
I'm curious out there, you know, what, what what knowledge
do you have about this that that we missed? You know,
let us know, especially like the animal stuff. I swear
there's got to be more out there about animals. That
um just is kind of lost, you know. Um. So

(59:53):
you can contact us where on social media? Yeah, I
mean you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and tumbler.
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of our episodes, includes links to related content on the

(01:00:13):
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