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How long can you live with your head cut off?


psi20

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I once saw this Discovery Channel documentary about guillotines. There was a story about 2 scientists who wanted to know how long one can live without a head. One scientist had his head sliced off by a guillotine and the other watched his head. The head-less scientist was supposed to keep on blinking to let the other time how long he was still alive. Supposedly, he was alive for 15 or so seconds.

 

So how do people and animals live without their head for a certain amount of time. I heard that cockroaches can live without their heads for a week.

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I once saw this Discovery Channel documentary about guillotines. There was a story about 2 scientists who wanted to know how long one can live without a head. One scientist had his head sliced off by a guillotine and the other watched his head. The head-less scientist was supposed to keep on blinking to let the other time how long he was still alive. Supposedly' date=' he was alive for 15 or so seconds.

[/quote']

That's a true dedication to science.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The chicken that lived without a head was quite famous. It didn't actually lose all of it's head but more of a diagonal slice from top-back to bottom-front this left most of the brain stem intact and the chicken very much alive and very much pissed off.

 

The owner kept the chicken as a showpiece and fed it by putting food down it's throat. It lived for some time and finally died when it chocked to death. It was more a case of a faceless chicken rather than headless.

 

Insects are a completely different kettle of fish. They don't have the same nervous system with a brain as mammals do and as such loosing it doesn't have the same cataclysmic effect.

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Insects are a completely different kettle of fish. They don't have the same nervous system with a brain as mammals do and as such loosing it doesn't have the same cataclysmic effect.

 

they have cerebral ganglia' date=' not brains. their nervous system is equally distributed throughout their bodies.

 

hey psi you can watch the video of beheading and discover time from there.

 

watch "Faces of Death" part one

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they have cerebral ganglia, not brains. their nervous system is equally distributed throughout their bodies.

 

i dont know about most insects but flies have two nerve centers, one in their heads and one where their legs come together. they do die fairly quickly after having their heads removed however. im not sure exactly why, i guess some essential functions are only in the head center.

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Mike the headless chicken died after 3 months of being force fed into being a fatbody. Then when left alone in it's personal room with pen it choked to death in true rockstar style.

So a human can 'live' without their head so long as the brain dosn't receive the "your screwed" message back from the rather recently removed receptors in the body?

 

Would that also answer the question of where the divine spirit rests ? or does the spirit just waits for the conscious mind of the person to die before joining the spirit in the traditional space in the chest of the person ?

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Mike the headless chicken died after 3 months of being force fed into being a fatbody. Then when left alone in it's personal room with pen it choked to death in true rockstar style.

So a human can 'live' without their head so long as the brain dosn't receive the "your screwed" message back from the rather recently removed receptors in the body?

 

Would that also answer the question of where the divine spirit rests ? or does the spirit just waits for the conscious mind of the person to die before joining the spirit in the traditional space in the chest of the person ?

 

What? Your reasoning is screwed. How the hell did u leap from you die when your heads cut off to - therefore your spirits in your head..... wtf

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So a human can 'live' without their head so long as the brain dosn't receive the "your screwed" message back from the rather recently removed receptors in the body?

 

no... i suppose you could keep a brain alive if you provided the proper functions artificially. but under normal circumstances the body requires the brain to tell it what to do (hey lungs, fill up. hey lungs, deflate. etc.) and the brain requires the body for oxygen and neutrients. it has nothing to do with a "your screwed" message(wtf did that come from anyway?).

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Mike the headless chicken died after 3 months of being force fed into being a fatbody. Then when left alone in it's personal room with pen it choked to death in true rockstar style.

So a human can 'live' without their head so long as the brain dosn't receive the "your screwed" message back from the rather recently removed receptors in the body?

 

Would that also answer the question of where the divine spirit rests ? or does the spirit just waits for the conscious mind of the person to die before joining the spirit in the traditional space in the chest of the person ?

 

 

lol =D talking about making a leap. never heard of divine spirit rests

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1) the "your screwed" message is just the basic negative feedback system of the body. Receptors send message to the brain, brain sends message to the appropriate organs to respond to the issue. The nerves in your neck and spinal chord would tell you brain you body is now absent, brain now has no way to supply its processes. Just using creative writing to add spice. In future ill just remain silent sheeesh

2) I did not LEAP to the divine spirit resting in the skull. THAT idea has been around for thousands of years. People keep skulls of their relatives once they die(some African tribes). The eating of brains to gain peoples spiritual power,strength, intelligence etc. Then u have the idea of the traditional christian saying you are a spirit in your whole entire being which then goes to God once you die.Along those lines there are also other religious sects and cults that believe that your heart and blood is the source of your spirit. If in fact "you"(conscious abstract thought makes us human and one step beyond the "souless" animal) remain alive once your body is giving a lovely death rattle on the ground next to your blinking head.

So would the fact that you are still blinking after being detached from you body prove an entire group of religious beliefs false ?

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  • 2 weeks later...

As for roaches, i once had one that survived three weeks, totally headless... and besides not eating or reacting well to visual stimuli, he was quite active, and freaked out at vibrations and rapid temp changes...

 

please, don't ask me why I had a pet roach or why i had to remove his head, the memories are just too painful. Jus take my word for it... it's a true story. Boy, I really miss Todd :-( ...

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i know that rattle snakes can live for like 20 minutes with the head cut off. im not just talking about the body twitching, the head actually kept opening its mouth trying to bite me, and it was sticking its tounge out too.

 

suppose that you could keep the brain alive with some sort of machine that pumped oxygen rich blood into the arteries leading to the brain, then how long do you think the brain would live? in a human i mean.

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if you ensure its getting nutrients too, i don't see why you can't get it to live a long time, of course, you'd also need a filter to cleanse all the blood, but i know i'm missing something beyond obvious, several somethings, as to why even that wouldn't work right,

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I once saw this Discovery Channel documentary about guillotines. There was a story about 2 scientists who wanted to know how long one can live without a head. One scientist had his head sliced off by a guillotine and the other watched his head. The head-less scientist was supposed to keep on blinking to let the other time how long he was still alive. Supposedly' date=' he was alive for 15 or so seconds.

 

So how do people and animals live without their head for a certain amount of time. I heard that cockroaches can live without their heads for a week.[/quote']

 

sorry to be so dissapointing but once your head is cut off you have no muscle movement what so ever.This is not to say you are not conscious just that voluntary or involuntary movement of facial features is not possible.AND PLEASE DONT ASK FOR PROOF..just ask a biologist or google it

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