Body Worlds

Want a lesson in anatomy? The Body Worlds exhibit in Salt Lake City is the place to go. It is an interesting mix of body parts and dead humans contorted into unique “sculptures”.

Body Worlds 3 & The Story of the Heart, is an exhibit where you learn about anatomy, physiology and health by viewing real human bodies. This sounds cool but honestly the white trash in me wanted to learn more about how they separated the muscles, tendons, blood vessels and removed the skin to make the exhibit than the intricacies of how a knee joint functions.

We took the option to have the hand held audio guide, who turned out to be a mono-tone man who almost had me asleep half way through, so I stopped listening to him and only listened to the things I thought were really cool.

The bodies are preserved through plastination, which is a method for specimen preservation invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens in 1977. This exhibit has more than 200 authentic human specimens including whole body plastinates, organs, translucent body slices, and a special presentation on the heart. I only gagged once, at the tongue, it was HUGE!! The thought of that thing in my mouth… ugh still makes me gag!

I really liked the baby exhibit where it shows how a baby is formed and the changes it goes through the first few weeks. After that they turn into little babies and I had to walk through quickly, they were just too close to the size of Cameron and it sort of freaked me out.

Court and Alexis got a great anatomy lesson on what male parts look like, and as a side note they look the same on a dead guy as they do on a living man minus that little "sac".

In the end I learned that a fat person is fat all they way through thanks to that fat person that was sliced into transparent sheets. I also saw what smokers do to their lungs, and that is seriously disgusting! All and all I thought it was cool and it is definitely a once in a life time thing to go see.