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The answer to that would be, sort of.

After you die, your body can be seen as a big bag of blood. Initially, that bag is under some pressure, a bit less than the diastolic pressure (the pressure between heartbeats). So if you cut into an artery a little after death you may get some squirting, rather than just leaking. It won't be much, since diastolic pressure isn't that much over the pressure of the air, and the instant you make an incision that pressure is released.

And it only lasts for about half an hour; after that, the muscles relax completely, letting the blood vessels expand. The blood basically leaks down into the lowest parts of the body. Make an incision where the blood has pooled, and it will leak out. That's why you hang meat by the feet after slitting the throat, to allow the blood to drain out. A mortician usually helps this out with pressurized embalming fluid.

After a few days, the blood vessels themselves will decompose along with the rest of the body. If the blood hasn't leaked out already it joins the other bodily fluids and liquid byproducts of decomposition.

So a body can bleed for a while, though in a different way from a body pressurized by the heart.

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14y ago

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