No, it is not legal to taxidermy a person anywhere in the United States. Every state limits final disposition of human remains to a short list of approved methods, and taxidermy is not on any of them. On top of that, all 50 states have abuse-of-a-corpse or desecration statutes that would treat the physical process of taxidermy as a crime, and the people who carried it out — along with the family member who arranged it — could face charges.
Families Do Not Own a Body the Way They Own Property
American common law has long held that a human body cannot be owned. Courts recognize a narrow exception called quasi-property rights, which give the next of kin limited authority over a deceased person’s remains. That authority is custodial, and it exists for defined purposes: carrying out the deceased’s burial wishes, arranging organ donation, and protecting the body from mishandling before and after final disposition.1Cornell Law School / Legal Information Institute (LII). Quasi Property Rights of a Human Body
Nothing in that framework lets a family transform a body however they wish. The right extends only as far as proper handling and lawful disposition require. A relative who wanted a loved one taxidermied would find no legal authority to make that happen, no matter how clearly the request was expressed.
Criminal Penalties for Mistreating a Body
All 50 states criminalize treating a dead body in ways that would deeply offend ordinary family or community standards. The core steps of taxidermy — removing skin, chemically treating tissue, and mounting the result for display — fall squarely within the conduct these statutes were written to prohibit.
Over half of states classify abuse of a corpse as a felony; the rest treat it as a misdemeanor. In felony states, sentences can run from several months to multiple years in prison. Some states reserve the felony tier for conduct that offends the broader community rather than just the family. These prosecutions are not hypothetical. A mortuary operator and a collaborator were recently charged with abuse of a corpse after conducting unauthorized preservation experiments on remains, and working inside a licensed funeral facility did not shield them. A taxidermist who agreed to work on a human body, and the family member who arranged the work, would both be exposed to the same kind of charge.
What the Law Actually Allows
State law limits final disposition to a closed list of methods carried out by licensed funeral professionals. The traditional options are burial, cremation, and entombment. Whole-body donation for medical education or scientific research is also recognized, governed by a version of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act adopted in every state.2Cornell Law School / Legal Information Institute (LII). Uniform Anatomical Gift Act
Newer methods have been added in some states — alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation) in roughly 28 states, and natural organic reduction (human composting) in about 14. Each one became lawful only after going through a state legislative approval process. Taxidermy has never been proposed as a disposition method in any state legislature, and the underlying objections make approval essentially inconceivable: it produces a permanent display piece rather than final rest, no licensed professional framework exists to perform it on humans, and it conflicts head-on with abuse-of-a-corpse statutes.
Why Embalming and Preserved Body Exhibits Are Not Counterexamples
Two things that look similar are often raised as objections: embalming, which is legal, and traveling exhibits of preserved human bodies, which are also legal. Neither one opens a door to taxidermy.
Embalming temporarily preserves a body by replacing bodily fluids with chemical solutions, and it exists solely to allow a funeral viewing before a lawful final disposition like burial or cremation.3Cornell Law School / Legal Information Institute (LII). Embalming It is a preparatory step on the way to an approved endpoint, performed only by licensed funeral professionals under state oversight. Taxidermy is designed to be the endpoint. The body would simply remain, indefinitely, in someone’s possession, which is the situation the whole legal framework around human remains is built to prevent.
Exhibitions like Body Worlds operate under a different set of laws: body donation and anatomical education statutes, not funeral disposition law. The bodies on display were donated by the individuals themselves during their lifetimes through programs that comply with the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act and state anatomical board oversight.2Cornell Law School / Legal Information Institute (LII). Uniform Anatomical Gift Act The preservation technique is plastination, which replaces water and fat in tissue with reactive polymers; it was developed for medical education, and its legal footing rests on that educational purpose. State attorneys general have concluded that these exhibitions require anatomical board approval and are regulated as medical education rather than as a funeral matter.
Even then, the permission is narrow and conditional. International guidelines from anatomical science organizations hold that payment for human material is unacceptable and that display should be limited to genuine educational contexts.4PMC (PubMed Central). Plastination: Ethical and Medico-Legal Considerations A family cannot use the anatomical gift framework to have a relative plastinated and returned home for personal display.
A Will or Family Directive Cannot Authorize It
A common follow-up question is whether a person could simply put the request in their will. The short answer is that a will can only direct actions that are legal. A provision instructing your executor to do something that violates criminal law is void. No court would enforce it, no executor would be obligated to carry it out, and an executor who actually tried would face the same criminal liability as anyone else who mistreated a body.
The same limitation applies to the next of kin. Most states establish a priority list for who controls funeral arrangements, typically a surviving spouse, then adult children, then parents, and so on. That authority covers choosing among lawful disposition methods. Picking burial over cremation is a decision the law respects. Picking taxidermy is not a choice the law recognizes, regardless of how clearly the deceased or the family expressed the wish.
For someone drawn to the idea of long-term bodily preservation, the closest legal avenue is whole-body donation to a medical education or research program. These programs accept donations under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, and some institutions do use plastination as a preservation technique for teaching specimens. The body stays in the institution’s care for educational purposes and does not return to the family, but it is the only context in which anything resembling long-term human preservation operates within the law.