About 100 human brain specimens have gone missing from the University of Texas at Austin.
The 100 missing brains, stored in formaldehyde-filled jars, are part of a larger collection of roughly 200 brains which the Austin State Hospital moved to the University of Texas in 1986 for purposes of education and research, reports the Austin American-Statesman.
Among the missing brains is the famous, demented brain of Charles Whitman, an engineering student and former U.S. Marine who killed 16 people (including his wife and his mother) during a shooting spree from a perch atop UT-Austin’s Main Building in 1966.
“We think somebody may have taken the brains, but we don’t know at all for sure,” psychology professor Tim Schallert told the Statesman.
Whatever the case, Whitman’s brain is definitely missing.
“We can’t find that brain,” Schallert lamented.
Schallert explained that his psychology lab wasn’t big enough for all 200 brains. So, he and his colleagues have only stored 100 or so of the specimens in the lab. The rest ended up down in the basement of the Animal Resources Center on campus.
“They are no longer in the basement,” said another psychology professor, Lawrence Cormack, according to Yahoo! News.
Cormack believes there may be a bevy of brain burglars.
“It’s entirely possible word got around among undergraduates and people started swiping them for living rooms or Halloween pranks,” he told the Statesman.
In a statement, UT-Austin officials pledged to probe “the circumstances surrounding this collection since it came here nearly 30 years ago.” School officials promise they are “committed to treating the brain specimens with respect.”
Undergrads and people wishing to swipe brains for living rooms or future Halloween pranks should now head to the Norman Hackerman Building — the new location for the UT-Austin psychology department’s excess brains.
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