Member-only story
The Nuance
A New Explanation for Near-Death Experiences
NDEs may be a byproduct of an important survival instinct
In 1843, the Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone was attacked by a lion.
“I heard a shout . . . and looking half round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing on me,” Livingstone later recalled. The lion clamped its jaws around his shoulder and shook him “as a terrier dog does a rat.”
But then a curious thing happened. The shock of the attack produced what Livingstone described as a sort of dreaminess. “There was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though [I was] quite conscious of all that was happening,” he said. His body grew limp, and the lion soon let him go.
In a July, 2021 study in Brain Communications, European researchers highlight Livingstone’s account and many others like it as examples of thanatosis, or “playing dead.”
While possums are most famous for this behavior, thanatosis is actually common throughout the animal kingdom. Insects, birds, fish, snakes, dogs, and most other living creatures — including humans, if the situations are right — will instinctively feign death if the usual escape routes (fight or flight) are no longer possible.
In their new study, the European team makes the case that near-death experiences (NDEs) may be a byproduct of thanatosis.
Considering the complexity of the human brain, they write, it’s possible that thanatosis in people “would evolve from a relatively stereotypical behaviour into a more elaborate experience with rich details . . . and which also may extend to situations other than predatory attacks.”
The idea that humans ever “play dead” may sound odd, but it’s not farfetched.
In some life-or-death scenarios — such as active-shooter situations — people have been known to deliberately feign death in order to avoid danger. But there are also times when death-feigning seems to be unconscious and automatic.
“Humans exposed to extreme threat may react with a state of involuntary, temporary motor inhibition known as tonic immobility,” wrote the authors of a 2017 study. That study found that 70% of sexual assault…
