How long can you live with your head cut off?

[AzurePhoenix]

huh... blinking? minor lip twitches? how bout your tongue?

[zpoot]

there was some sort of beetle in my room one morning before school...that killed and when i came back from school it was gone...

 

that poor chicken..why didn't they just kill it?

[AzurePhoenix]

obviously, it was either not as dead as you thought, it was somehow relocated by natural or unnatural forces, or something ate it

[AzurePhoenix]

and as for the chicken... people can be unimaginably cruel to non-human animals when there's a chance thay can make a buck or get on the news

[hyebeh]

my answer: not long enough...

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

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

Quite a simple explanation for the headless insects.

 

Chickens are a different matter.

[jdurg]

i dont know about most insects but flies have two nerve centers, one in their heads and one where their legs come together.

 

Heh. I've heard many women saying the same thing about Human Males.

[Bettina]

I want to change this thread a little......

 

Instead of a guilotine, you are sentenced to death this way....

 

Suppose you were standing straight up on a flat floor. In back of you was this super thin, fine honed, surgical steel blade mounted on a pendulum. When the pendulum was released, it picked up quite a bit of speed before entering the back of your neck. The cut was so clean that little blood was noticed and the pendulum lost very little velocity as it exited out the front of your neck with no blunt trauma associated with a guilotine. Your head, though completely severed, is still on your body and has yet to fall. (pretend it will slide off, and assume no blood transfer from the body to the head)

 

Would you see the pendulum moving away from you?

Would you "know" what has happened?

How long will you be capable of knowing?

 

Just curious

 

Bettina

[Callipygous]

well... if its perfect enough im guessing your veins stay fine until the next pulse, when the extra pressure will probably throw them out of alignment, same thing with your throat. the part i dont know about is nerves. if they get severed that cleanly can they still function?

[researcher88]

I seem to be more interested at the scientist's dedication.

Why will someone do such a thing?

By the way, A cockroach can live for several weeks without its head...im gonna try that.

[rakuenso]

i surely hope humans can't be fed with a tube like the chicken...

 

else someone's gonna start another schiavo case....

[Dak]

Instead of a guilotine' date=' you are sentenced to death this way....

 

Suppose you were standing straight up on a flat floor. In back of you was this super thin, fine honed, surgical steel blade mounted on a pendulum. When the pendulum was released, it picked up quite a bit of speed before entering the back of your neck. The cut was so clean that little blood was noticed and the pendulum lost very little velocity as it exited out the front of your neck with no blunt trauma associated with a guilotine. Your head, though completely severed, is still on your body and has yet to fall. (pretend it will slide off, and assume no blood transfer from the body to the head)

 

Would you see the pendulum moving away from you?

Would you "know" what has happened?

How long will you be capable of knowing?

 

Just curious

 

Bettina[/quote']hmm, i guess thered be a lot of suction keeping the head on, as both sides of the cut are wet. ever cut youself with a razor, stanley-knife or scalpel? it can take a good few seconds for the flesh to 'realise' its been cut. i guess the suction could posssibly keep the head on and all the nerves etc in place, as long as the head wasnt mooved too much. or you could die instantly. eithers possible. instant deaths more likely tho, id have thought.

[The Thing]

Normally, one's brain would die in about 6 to 8 seconds without oxygen.

[AzurePhoenix]

but wouldn't shock sort of end your consciouness a bit faster?

[CanadaAotS]

that would work, but you'd have to have oxygen rich blood, plus made-to-order nutrients (the body process's usually make them for the brain), and keep blood pressure in order as well... then yah they could live (probably).

[ed84c]

ARGH!!! This is rubbish, the thread SHOULD read how long can you live with out a BODY.

 

I know it sounds pedantic, but really, i hate it when people say that because its simply wrong. Animal life is defined by brain activity, which incidentily is in your head.

 

SO the chicken really, was not a live, just some chemistry going on there.

[Dak]

Animal life is defined by brain activity, which incidentily is in your head.

not really, as many animals dont even have brains in the first place (insects, clams, creationists, jellyfish etc) but they are all definately alive.

 

the body could, in theory, remain biologically alive without a brain.

[DrDNA]

This is the best thread I've ever read and can't believe that it actually died.

 

I've personally seen headless chickens run around for a minute or two and then flop around for 10 or 15 minutes.

One thanksgiving morning, when I was just a kid, I even saw a big, mean tom turkey sans head achieve flight status. But it didn't go very far. It was a very happy day for me because he would chase me into a corner and flog me approximately every day for a couple of years. I resorted to carrying a leather bull whip with me everywhere to try to keep him off. I think he thought he was the dominant male, but I've still got my head and he doesn't.

 

Well, that's all I have to say about headless things for now. I hope everyone else that hasn't read this thread enjoys it as much as I did.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, it seems medical science has advanced to the point where we can keep a man alive without his brain (cortex).

 

To keep a head alive we need:

*Blood flow: artificial heart

*Blood oxygen: artificial lungs (do those require a real lung?)

*Toxin removal: dialysis machine

*Temperature regulation: thermostat

*Replacement red and white blood cells: blood banks

*Blood glucose regulation: ?? seems possible

 

Am I missing something?

 

Perhaps a better question would be, can we cut someone's head off and reattach it to someone else's body?

[iNow]

Perhaps a better question would be, can we cut someone's head off and reattach it to someone else's body?

It seems we did this in 1812, then with more success in the 1970s.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_transplant

[Mr Skeptic]

It seems we did this in 1812, then with more success in the 1970s.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_transplant

 

From the wiki:

In the 1970s a group of scientists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland Ohio, led by Robert J. White, a neurosurgeon and a professor of neurological surgery who was inspired by the work of Vladimir Demikhov, performed a highly controversial operation to transplant the head of one monkey onto another’s body. The procedure was a success to some extent, with the animal being able to smell, taste, hear, and see the world around it. The operation involved cauterizing arteries and veins carefully while the head was being severed to prevent hypovolemia. Because the nerves were left entirely intact, connecting the brain to a blood supply kept it chemically alive. The animal survived for some time after the operation, even at times attempting to bite some of the staff.

 

So I guess its possible then. If you don't mind ending up quadriplegic.

[DrDNA]

 

Mike the headless chicken, the headless chicken's former head and his manager, Hope Wade, during an interview. Wade did all the talking.

[Silverspeed]

The eye moving is most probably a twitch

 

And i dont believe that humans would live longer than 5 seconds without a head

Thats my personal opinion

[Freirec]

My uncle accidently killed one of his chickens by closing the metal chicken-coop door on its neck. It lived for a week, reacting to touch and being fed through a tube. It layed an egg w/ its head cut off, athough, the egg never hatched.