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.
