Apr 17, 2025, 10:20 PM IST
Cockroaches can live for up to a week without their heads. They don’t rely on their brains for basic body functions and breathe through spiracles on their bodies.
The famous case of Mike the Headless Chicken shows that chickens can survive for days or even weeks without a head if part of the brainstem remains intact.
These worms can regenerate their heads (and even brains) if cut off. They can survive for days as the regeneration process begins.
Some snakes continue to show movement and even bite reflexes for minutes or hours after being beheaded, due to their slow metabolism and neural response.
Frogs can continue to move, jump, and even react to stimuli for a short time after decapitation, thanks to reflexes in their spinal cord.
An octopus’s arms can react, move, and respond to touch even after being severed from the body, due to independent neural circuits in each limb.
Leeches can keep moving and reacting to touch after losing their heads, due to a simple nervous system distributed along their segmented bodies.
In lab experiments, decapitated fruit flies have shown movement for hours, driven by simple motor patterns in the body.
Some turtles have been observed to survive for days or weeks after losing their heads, though it’s very rare and depends on how the injury occurs.