“Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science” by Erika Engelhaupt

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A fascinating book that covers exactly what its title says: the Gory Details about the natural world. From things that can gross out and disgust us, to taboos and how they can affect the way we treat ourselves (like talking about the private parts of females), this book is full of fastinatings facts about possibly disgusting things that, in the end, is not as disgusting as it seems. A compilation of the author’s Gory Details column that appears in both the Science News and National Geographic websites, this book will both fascinate and disgust it readers.

The first section looks at human bodies and how they are examined by forensics experts to determine when and how they died. What happens to a body when a human dies is also covered, followed by the curious matter of whether pets would eat their owners who may have unexpectedly died. The section closes with a look at how science can discover why feet in shoes are appearing at a particular shore (and it is not due to a serial killer).

The next section looks at disgust: how and why we react with disgust as well as the differences between cultures on disgust. With stories of eating insects to how insects like black soldier flies eat disgusting things, to how fly poop might be mistaken from blood splatter, leading to all kinds of forensic and DNA analysis issues, this section has a lot of disgust. Probably one of the more disturbing ones is whether pets might be eating their owners who have died unexpectedly.

The third section looks at taboos held by various cultures around the world and what can happen when science bumps up against such taboos like the idea of whole head transplants. Taboos against murder and cannibalism also don’t apply to various animals. Another taboo area is the female body, especially the clitoris which science has revealed to be biologically interesting once they are really closely examined. Mensuration is also another area that has yielded to research once taboos about it are overcome. A final human taboo that some animals indulge in is necrophilia, including having sex with dead bodies.

After taboos, our disgust with ‘bugs’ and pests are given a look, starting with the author’s own disgusting experience with rats and, when some died in her house, an infestation of carrion flies. Human mites are also given an intimate look (really intimate) as well as house cockroaches and other insects that infest houses and, occasionally, our orifices. Worms and parasites that live in (and on) our bodies are also given a look. Finally, a look at people who get themselves stung and bitten for science are given a mention. (Those who cringe at reading this might be advised to quickly skip this section of the book if required.)

The next section looks at the human anatomy. Starting with how we excrete, it moves on to ear-wax (which is not as disgusting as it sounds), fecal transplants and answers some questions about what pee (and other things) might be in swimming pools. A look at what is actually in the saliva of dogs and cats is next (and it’s not as clean as you might think), before closing with busting some myths about peeing (on wounds or drinking it), bloodletting and detoxing.

The last section looks the human mind. It covers strange behaviours like the feeling some people have that insects are crawling all over (or under) their skin, or the way voodoo dolls can make us feel better as we ‘torture’ the dolls that represent certain people in our lives. A fascinating look at ‘super recognizers’ is also given, followed by portrayals of psychotic people in film as compared to those in real life. The section closes with the author’s personal strange behaviour; the inability to stand certain kinds of sound like lips smacking.

Book read from 2021/03/20 to 2021/03/25