I’ve looked into this as I had a phase where I wanted to bequeath my various bones to my friends, family, and enemies after my death.
The best way to clean a skeleton is with dermestid beetles. They are most commonly used at natural history museums for preparing animal bones, but I couldn’t find any that would work with humans. Your best bet is to find a private entity with experience in preparing bodies for scientific study. Alternatively, you could source the beetles yourself - this would likely take longer as you need quite a few, so storage will be a concern, but you wouldn’t need to worry about transport which has more legal considerations. Once the beetles have done their work, the bones themselves keep quite well if stored properly - no different than animal bones.
Unfortunately the whole processes seemed cost prohibitive so I’ll probably just ask to be dumped in a forest somewhere
I helped maintain a dermestid beetle colony that was used by a natural history museum to prep specimens for display.
They are surprisingly easy to care for. It was just a large wooden box full of ripped up paper egg cartons. Drop a nice head in there and mist the cardboard with some water. Soon you have a nice clean skull. When not using it, just mist the cardboard once a week. The beetles just hang out between feedings.
I’ve looked into this as I had a phase where I wanted to bequeath my various bones to my friends, family, and enemies after my death.
The best way to clean a skeleton is with dermestid beetles. They are most commonly used at natural history museums for preparing animal bones, but I couldn’t find any that would work with humans. Your best bet is to find a private entity with experience in preparing bodies for scientific study. Alternatively, you could source the beetles yourself - this would likely take longer as you need quite a few, so storage will be a concern, but you wouldn’t need to worry about transport which has more legal considerations. Once the beetles have done their work, the bones themselves keep quite well if stored properly - no different than animal bones.
Unfortunately the whole processes seemed cost prohibitive so I’ll probably just ask to be dumped in a forest somewhere
I helped maintain a dermestid beetle colony that was used by a natural history museum to prep specimens for display.
They are surprisingly easy to care for. It was just a large wooden box full of ripped up paper egg cartons. Drop a nice head in there and mist the cardboard with some water. Soon you have a nice clean skull. When not using it, just mist the cardboard once a week. The beetles just hang out between feedings.
For science purposes only, folks
How long does this take? Does it have to be dead? Asking for a friend.
A couple days. And not technically, but the box needs to be quite strong. Plus there’s some extra prep work.
kinda gruesome for a joke but you did ask