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