The Science of Necrophilia

a little sexual in nature. Um, certainly graphic, certainly graphic, 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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

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

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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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,

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

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

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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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. 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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, 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 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. 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

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, 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 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, 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 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. 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, and this like as a way of conquering that, I suppose transform It transforms that fear into a desire um, which I think is fairly common transition, not necessarily with dead bodies. I think most people don't experience it on that level. But being afraid of something is also titillating,

you know. That's why we watch horror movies exactly. Uh. And then the last one is just you know, the the fantasy of some It sometimes begins after you've just had your first exposure to a corpse, whether that's you know, as a child or an adult. Um. Yeah, it's a shocking and and and and it makes an impact absolutely. Uh. So 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 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 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 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, 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

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

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, 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

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 little more idea about who necrophiles are and uh in why they do what they do. Sex in that study were male. Um, yeah, and I found one rare female

case was cited. Uh and I didn't have the time to be able to look up the case study on this, but her name was Karen green Lee, so apparently she's a well known female 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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. 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 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, 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 you can contact us where on social media? Yeah, I mean you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and tumbler. I think we blow the mind on all those. Please write to us on there or to blow your Mind dot com the website, and we'll make sure that the landing page for this episode, as with with with all of our episodes, includes links to related content on the site as well as links out to some of these

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