This TED Talk features progressive mortician, Caitlin Dowdy, recorded live at TEDmed 2016.

When I die, I would like for my body to be laid out to be eaten by animals.

Having your body laid out to be eaten by animals is not for everyone.

Maybe you have already had the end-of-life talk with your family

and decided on, I don't know, cremation. And in the interest of full

disclosure, what I am proposing for my dead body is not strictly legal at the moment, but it's not

without precedent. We've been laying out our dead for all of human history.

It's called exposure burial.

In fact, it's likely happening right now as we speak.

In the mountainous regions of Tibet, they practice sky burial,

a ritual where the body is left to be consumed by vultures.

In Mumbai, in India, they put there, those who follow the Parcy religion, put their dead in structures called Towers of Silence. These are interesting

cultural tidbits, but they just haven't really been that popular in the Western world. They're

not what you'd expect.

In America, our death traditions have come to be chemical embalming,

followed by burial at your local cemetery or, more recently, cremation.

I myself am a recent vegetarian,

which means I spent the first 30 years or so of my life frantically inhaling animals, as many as I could get my hands on.

Why, when I die, should they not have their turn with me?

Am I not an animal?

Biologically speaking, are we not all in this room?

Animals?

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