I’ve recently seen videos of fresh meat moving after death, and while they say its muscle memory, I confused and intrigued on the science of it.
In: Biology
The term “headless chicken” is based on if you chop the head of a chicken off, it will then run around for a few seconds.
When creatures die there isn’t some overarching signal that goes through their system that lets all of the cells know that it’s all over. Cells individually die as they either run out of food, oxygen or are poisoned by their own waste that isn’t being removed any longer since blood flow stopped.
Muscle cells are particularly well suited to operate without blood flow though since they can function anaerobically – they don’t need air. So they stay alive a little bit longer than other types of cells. This means that they will randomly twitch for a bit until the cells die. I also believe that the nerve cells that control the muscles also send off signals as they die that causes the muscles to contract.
Electrical energy still being stored in the muscles after death, there’s some weird videos of frog legs dancing when salted
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