Semantic enigmas. The body beautiful. Red tape, white lies. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Is it possible that there follows a period of awareness, albeit of only a few nanoseconds? Investor Relations.
Review a Brill Book. Assessments of animal experience and consciousness are embedded in all issues of animal welfare policy, and the field of animal welfare science has been developed to make these evaluations. In light of modern studies of the social construction of scientific knowledge, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to date on how crucial evaluations about animals are made.
In this paper, I begin to fill that gap by presenting a historical case study of the attempt to define the pain and distress of one common practice in animal research-the use of the tabletop guillotine to decapitate laboratory rodents. I describe the negotiations involved in reaching consensus on the meaning of the available data and caution animal care and use committees that they should always work with the realization that our scientific knowledge of what animals experience is partial and provisional knowledge at best.
Reference Works. Primary source collections. Open Access Content. Contact us. Sales contacts. Publishing contacts. Social Media Overview. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Statement. Login to my Brill account Create Brill Account. Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Studies in other organisms have suggested that even hours after death, gene expression and activity is still occurring and in some cases increasing in quantity.
Further research and understanding are needed in humans to truly establish what the activity being detected after death is and how this relates to function and the conscious versus unconscious activity. The most famous case of surviving decapitation is probably that of Mike.
Mike survived being decapitated for 18 months. How, you might ask? Well, it appears the supposedly fatal cut managed to cut at an angle through his brainstem, keeping the parts of his central nervous system that control his basic functions alive. A timely and well-placed blood clot stopped him from bleeding to death. Did I mention that Mike was a chicken? Exactly how long a person can remain conscious after decapitation remains debatable.
We know that chickens often walk around for several seconds after decapitation; the Dutch rat study mentioned earlier suggests a length of perhaps four seconds. Other studies of small mammals have found up to 29 seconds [source: Khuly]. This in itself seems a horrid length of time for such a state. Take a moment to count off four seconds while you look around the room; you'll likely find you can take in quite a bit visually and aurally during that time.
This is what is most disturbing about the concept of consciousness remaining after decapitation; we may feel pain and experience fear in those few moments before death. This has been reported in a number of cases where consciousness appeared to remain following decapitation. Most recently, in , an Army veteran reported that following a car accident that he was in with a friend, the decapitated head of his friend changed facial expressions: "First of shock or confusion then to terror or grief," [source: Bellows ].
Both King Charles I and Queen Anne Boleyn are reported to both have showed signs of trying to speak following their beheadings by executioners' swords, rather than by guillotine [source: Maslin ]. When he spoke out against the use of the guillotine in , German researcher S. Sommering cited reports of decapitated heads that have ground their teeth and that the face of one decapitated person "grimaced horribly" when a physician inspecting the head poked the spinal canal with his finger [source: Sommering ].
Perhaps most famously was the study conducted by a Dr. Beaurieux in of the head of executed criminal Henri Languille. Over the course of 25 to 30 seconds of observation, the physician recorded managing to get Languille to open his eyes and "undeniably" focus them on the doctor's twice by calling the executed man's name [source: Bellows ].
For more information on decapitation and other forms of capital punishment, head over to the next page. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe.
Science Vs. Extrasensory Perceptions. Is it possible to remain conscious after losing one's head? A History of Head Loss " ". Queen Anne Boleyn was one of the rare executed whose head was taken in a single blow. The Guillotine Excels at Decapitation " ".
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