Slice of zoo life

Latest Body Worlds' exhibit adds animals with PETA's OK

Wednesday turned into something of a busman's holiday for veterinarians Scott Leibsle and Rick Tully.

The pair made the trip to Chicago from Wisconsin to see the Museum of Science and Industry's new Body Worlds exhibit of preserved human cadavers.

The pair made the trip to Chicago from Wisconsin to see the Museum of Science and Industry's new Body Worlds exhibit of preserved human cadavers.

They got caught up, instead, at the eight-foot-tall, plastinated camel -- its midsection, neck and legs sliced to reveal its muscles, circulatory system and organs.

They got caught up, instead, at the eight-foot-tall, plastinated camel -- its midsection, neck and legs sliced to reveal its muscles, circulatory system and organs.

"See how tiny the brain is?" Tully, 57, asked Leibsle, pointing to the fist-size organ. "Look at the lung; it's as big as our torso,'' responded Tully, 29.

After drawing almost 800,000 visitors to the MSI in 2006, a second traveling version of Body Worlds opened Wednesday. Along with about 200 human specimens, including 20 fully preserved human bodies, this version also includes the camel and a juvenile double-humper, along with a sheep and a rooster.

"Our mission is knowledge about the human body. By including animal specimens, we show the similarities between humans and other creatures,'' said Dr. Angelina Whalley, the wife of plastination creator Gunther von Hagens and the designer of the exhibit.

The critter component is getting support from a source some might find surprising: the animal rights group PETA.

Including animals focuses attention "on the fact that humans and all other animals are made of exactly the same stuff -- flesh, blood and bone,'' said Erin Edwards, spokeswoman for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Additionally, Edwards said the group has heard from people who have seen Body Worlds and become vegetarians. "They studied the human corpse and realized that there is little difference in physical makeup between [humans and] the animals we're used to seeing segmented and otherwise disembodied," Edwards said in an e-mail.

Preparing animals is a bit more work than preparing humans, though they go through the same process at Body Worlds' German plant.

Basically, both are dissected, then dehydrated by immersing the bodies in acetone, which replaces the water in cells. A vacuum chamber removes the acetone, and the solvent is replaced with a polymer, said Whalley.

The camel, which came from Kazakstan, took a year to prepare, about double the time needed to prepare a human cadaver, said Whalley.

"You need huge vacuum tanks for dehydration because the specimen needs to fit in there,'' said Whalley. The firm also used big machinery to position and hold up the camel while it solidified, she said.

The first Chicago stop of Body Worlds featured a horse. The firm is currently plastinating an elephant, Whalley said.

Leibsle and Tully, who share a vet practice near Lake Geneva, specialize in horses and farm animals, but both have worked on camels.

Man or beast, "anatomy itself is fascinating to see, just to know how things are put together and work,'' said Tully.

Body Worlds runs through March 23. Tickets are $23 for adults, $19 for seniors and $12.75 for children 11 and under.

Contributing: Misha Davenport

aherrmann@suntimes.com

Body Worlds organizers say the exhibit is designed to help teach anatomy, and they offer these amazing facts:

•  It takes 20 of the face's 60 muscles to smile; 40 to frown.
•  A human heart beats 3 billion times in a typical lifetime.
•  The surface area of the lungs is roughly the same size as a tennis court.
•  Adults eat more than 1,000 pounds of food a year.
•  The biggest muscle in the human body is the buttocks; the smallest is the stapedius, a 5-mm-long, thread-like muscle deep in the ear.