Do decapitated heads float in water?

Don't ask me why I need to know this, but I need to know this!! :o

Anybody know?

:evilgrin:

on the state of decomposition
It is rare to see them float

After the stuff gets eaten, the skull fills with water and sinks.

So there is a short time they would be on the surface.

Does that help?

decay causes significant swelling of tissues; when necrosis and decay continues, the fatty tissue which floats is destroyed until you basically are left with the skull and a few tags of tissue which sinks.

So, if it's fresh off the neck, it might float a bit. But once the fish get ahold of it, down it goes. Sounds about right.

Thanks. :D

fresh water, which may make a difference.

:)

:puke:

I am essentially an evil head in a jar who wants to rule the world, hooked up via NetZero to the internets.

I guess this would depend a lot on the state of decay, since a cleaned skull would likely fill up with water and sink, while a more recent find would have some floating ability. A colleague who works with police regarding a particular beach on Lake Ontario told me that they sometimes get dismembered body parts drifting ashore. So if it happens to limbs, why not heads?

Do you think they would start to sink within the hour?

If it's near the shore, the waves would probably wash them up before they decomposed enough to sink.

I think. :shrug:

Otherwise it'll go out to sea. Got tide tables?

Tucker

yes, but never a head.

Lets see...

It's a waxing crescent moon, and it's morning. This is on a west facing shore.

I completely forgot how that affects tides, but I think that means the moon follows the sun as the sun rises, ergo the tide would be rising. Since the moon is rising in the east, the water would pull towards the moon, and the tide would be going shorewards.

Right? :think:

In the morning, you have a lot of gull and fish activity. The larger "bait fish", (sardines and sunfish on the left coast) tend to school around the piers and will begin to pull chunks off of whatever drops into the water up to mid-morning - I've watched them swarm up to and literally pull down any food item that got dropped over the side of a pier within five to ten minutes - including containers of pudding.
Gulls will also go after and check out anything that drops. If it's something like a paper bag with food items in it, they'll start to swarm and pick at the bag until they can get to what's inside. Once the gulls gather on the surface of the water, you'll start seeing the schools of little fish under them, picking up bits that fall.

I suppose a head may "float" (or rather sink down about ten feet or so and follow the tidal current to shore) somewhat intact for up to a half hour, depending on how it was "packaged". But even without packaging, in salt water, the skull and whatever might remain after the little fishies get to it can still wash onto a beach. An adult skull itself is not heavy enough to sink to the sea floor and stay there - the buoyancy of the surface mass taking into account the ocean's salinity will be enough to keep it at around, oh, three to five feet above the sea floor so long as there is any sort of current - which you will have a lot of so long as there's no long area of breakwater or reef built up in front of where you drop the head/skull.

If it's freshwater, the skull will sink, no matter what sort of current or tidal wash you might have.

Caveat: I'm no marine biologist or oceanographer, but I've watched a lot of things drop into the ocean, and observed what has happened to them.

Haele

If you drop the head into a decent sized bit of kelp, that can protect it somewhat from the fish and will "float" it enough so that it can easily be found within a few hours.

San Diego has kelp beds off Point Loma petering off into Oceanside and big clumps wash up after Pacific storms and harvesting (about 4 months a year); if you walk the beaches, you find lots of clumps that have items that would otherwise sink tangled in the leaves and roots - cardboard boxes, small bits of cement, full, capped bottles; car seats...

Just a thought -

Haele

The air in the nasal and sinus cavities and the amount of fat on the cheeks will keep a head sort of bobbing along for a little while. It'll float face-up because of the fat in the cheeks. Eventually, waves will wash into the nasal passages, filling the airway with water, at which point the head will sink far enough under the water to be accessible to fish. Fish (or gulls, sometimes) will attack the fatty deposits on the cheeks and around the eyes, and then the head will sink.

It also depends on how much neck is still attached, though.

Tucker

are much more dense than other body parts.

Once the crabs get the eyes... within several hours... there is ready access to water throughout the sinus cavities which had provided only limited floatation anyway.

Like I said above, the answer is a firm kind of. And the only one I have ever seen floating was bobing around about 2-3 feet below the surface, but there was a pretty good size chunk of shoulder still attached to it, so YMMV.

I have participated in the recovery of dozens from muck and the bottom.

I guess I should point out that I was a Boatswain Mate in the Coast Guard for 25 years, before someone calls the FBI on me.

Thank you for your service in the Coast Guard, by the way. Seriously. :yourock:

:)

:evilgrin:

One size fits all. :o

is there something you need to tell us? :)

Ah, but can you not also make bridges out of stone? :)

Your not thinking of committing suicide and getting rid of the evidence are you?PLEASE DON'T DO IT ALL OF US HERE AT DU LOVE YOU VERY MUCH(!Well not THAT much):grouphug: :cry:

ON EDIT:this is meant to be funny as in if a person committed suicide by decapitating THEMSELF it would not be possible to discard of their own head kind of humour.I thought it was funny,oh well back to the bong.

..then I guess you've got yourself a pretty good plan.

:shrug:

tampering!
We gotta rethink this for ya.
Just hold on, Don't go doing something you'll regret down the road..

:)

Filled with nothing but air.

This question is beond me. :o

now you got me thinking...

Is the brain intact or is the head hollow???

:)

& that would surley affect the float/time/depth/theory wouldn't it?
But then we're not really talking about the President Bush..
Ya know the other guy named bush. (with a small b)
We need to make sure everyone understands that.

none of your business.

although this one may have been a bit of an airhead.

Same joke at exactly the same time.

Which of course can mean only one thing. We're now married.

Susang will be very upset.

Your sense of humor is excellent! And congratulations on this, our wedding day.

Okay, yeah. A little bit.

Next question?

I will move you up on my ass-kick list

Don't be a fence-sitter. Do they float or not? :P

then sink, then resurface. I dunno, WTF do *I* know?

See??? :o

I DO see - UNLIKE THAT SEVERED HEAD. BWAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAA.

Unless somehow there is a fair bit of oxygen trapped in the sinus cavities/mouth/throat or it has subcutaneous necrotic gas built up, but that takes a fair bit of time.

Think about it. If you throw a fresh steak in the water, does it float? Nope, unless it's almost entirely fat. And the skull is far denser than meat.

With "floaters", what brings them to the surface isn't just the gas, it's the fact that the gas easily becomes trapped in the chest/abdominal cavity, which turns the chest basically into one big balloon, which becomes lighter than water, raising the corpse.


/once had a very interesting discussion on how to keep a body down with a Homicide Lt.

I can't get to sleep until I know!

I just remembered a case from years back, where a body in a survival suit reported was found off Hawaii, after having been carried there from points north (I think the unfortunate person had fallen off a ship or an oil rig in the North Pacific?). There was no head, though (presumably it had come detached during the normal decomposition process).

JOHNSON CITY -- Authorities are conducting an investigation into the discovery of human body parts around Boone Lake on Friday and Saturday.
The Washington County Sheriff's Department reported that deputies were called to the park on Friday evening, where the two men reported finding a severed human head in the lake near the boat ramp at Winged Deer Park.
According to Sheriff Fred Phillips, deputies responded to the scene and found the head floating in 10 feet of water.
The department reported it was unknown how long the head had been in the water, but it was apparent that it had been in the water for a period of at least 10 days due to the decomposition.
http://www.starhq.com/html/localnews/1002/101302BooneLake.html

On September 8, three fisherman came across two severed heads in the Wilge River near Botleng. One belonged to a 10-year-old child and the other to a middle-aged person. It was estimated both heads had been in the water for two weeks. The faces were seriously disfigured.
http://www.suntimes.co.za/1998/10/04/news/gauteng/njhb20.htm?FACTNet

The appearance of a young woman's severed head, found floating in a dam near Johannesburg late in July, has fuelled press speculation that the victim was killed for her body parts.
http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2003/0814/fe21-2.html


My bet would be that a severed head would float. :shrug:

and, like I said. I know very little about fresh water, except how to drink it.

x(

Yummmmmm Yummmmmmm...


Head soup!

for several days, then bacterial action generates a noticeable gas that will cause flotation.

encase it in wet cement, leit cure forseveral hours, then toss it in.

I gots tha whole run.

:shrug: ;) :hi:

Actually, this thread was so fun I just wanted to kick it for the daytime crowd. :D

Welcome to DU!

:hi:

What has happened to you? Last time I visited DU (2 months ago) you seemed ok. Election Blues? :shrug:

PS-I suppose the answer would depend on whose head it is.