At Chulalongkorn’s Animal Cadaver Donation Centre, preferred companions compile just beyond existence.
On a moist January morning at Chulalongkorn College, the scent of incense mingles with prayer as veterinary students, professors, and grieving pet owners get at Sala Phra Kiao.
They’ve diagram to honour 1,180 ‘calm academics’ – the canine, cats, and queer animals whose bodies were donated for veterinary training.
Amongst these present is one owner who donated her preferred companion, alongside students who hold spent the past 300 and sixty five days learning anatomy from these very animals.
As sandalwood flowers are placed in remembrance, the ceremony represents the fruits of a unprecedented cycle of luxuriate in and learning.
“It must be acknowledged that it be a extremely complex resolution to donate a pet that we care for,” says Assistant Professor Dr Ekkapol Akaraphutiporn, head of Chulalongkorn College College of Veterinary Science’s (CUVET’s) Animal Cadaver Donation Centre. “But this sacrifice transforms into recordsdata and conjures up many veterinarians in the profession.”
The 17 January 2026 merit-making ceremony wasn’t appropriate a spiritual observance – it used to be recognition of the profound contribution these animals and their owners hold made to veterinary science.
The Calm Lecturers
Dr Ekkapol, an instructor in the Division of Surgical blueprint, explains that many folks mistakenly agree with donated animal bodies are susceptible fully for anatomy courses. The actuality is a long way more intensive.
“The cadavers are susceptible all the diagram thru surgical treatment, pathology, and anatomy,” he explains. “Surgical blueprint students be taught surgical procedures and ways. Pathology students query abnormalities. Anatomy students be taught current structure.”
These ‘principals’, as they’re respectfully known as, recount in solutions no textbook or 3D mannequin can replicate.
“They recount structure, biological differences, the feel of tissue – its hardness, toughness, and elasticity,” says Dr Ekkapol. “Fashions or thoroughly different teaching aids can’t provide the same skills. That’s the reason we aloof want principals for training.”
Every donated body serves more than one functions over 1-3 years.
“A single body isn’t in actual fact susceptible appropriate as soon as,” Dr Ekkapol emphasises. “It’s susceptible consistently unless we are succesful of recount it be been susceptible meaningfully, producing most profit.”
Past undergraduate training, the bodies provide persevering with training for practising veterinarians learning evolved surgical skills and make a contribution to school research projects.
“The principals kind the basis for veterinary students, multiply recordsdata for veterinarians, and enable new discoveries,” Dr Ekkapol explains. “They in the kill aid enhance the usual of veterinary remedy and training.”
More Than Technical Coaching
The dean’s description of animal cadavers as ‘academics without voices’ captures their profound characteristic. For students, working with the donated bodies affords lessons that lengthen a long way beyond anatomy.
“Past anatomical and medical skills, it teaches students to recognise the cost of existence and hold greater recognize for it,” says Dr Ekkapol. “It teaches them that their recordsdata comes from sacrifice, which in the kill shows again as teaching them compassion and responsibility in opposition to existence, to alter into veterinarians.”
This philosophy permeates each interaction with the cadavers.
“We hold cultivated recognize for the principals on myth of the very firstclass,” Dr Ekkapol notes. “Within the first lesson the employ of cadavers, now we hold got students lift flower garlands and lead prayers asking for forgiveness sooner than employ.”
Strict protocols give a elevate to this reverence: pictures, video recording, and social media posts regarding the cadavers are prohibited. College students are taught that “the bodies are academics offering recordsdata, now not appropriate learning equipment.”
Wipawanee Kaen-in, president of the Social Style and Neighborhood Service Division, CUVET scholar and chair of the merit-making ceremony, recalls her first anatomy lesson as a scholar.
“It wasn’t love taking a glimpse at a pet,” she shows. “I seen it as a instructor, on myth of it used to be so thoroughly different from lecture. Assorted canine remark thoroughly different anatomies. It made things a lot clearer than learning from lectures.”
She describes an unspoken belief amongst students: “We would possibly maybe maybe maybe now not shaggy dog memoir around. We would possibly maybe maybe maybe recognize the principals and query attentively. The department also has us pray for forgiveness sooner than discovering out.”
A Centre Born of Need
The Animal Cadaver Donation Centre serves as a predominant middleman, receiving donated bodies and distributing them to the Departments of Surgical blueprint, Pathology, and Anatomy in step with their wants.
The systematic manner contains detailed document-keeping from intake thru storage in freezer rooms to final distribution.
“Folk weren’t broadly wide awake there used to be animal body donation for principals,” Dr Ekkapol recalls. “It used to be restricted to a narrow circle. But now, with social media, folks are more wide awake. We receive more bodies for teaching.”
The past 300 and sixty five days seen in particular excessive interest, ensuing in 1,180 donations – roughly 70-80 per cent canine (660 bodies), with cats (462) and queer animals (58) comprising the remainder. Yet the centre can accommodate diagram more.
“Currently, there would possibly maybe be no restrict,” says Dr Ekkapol. “We can accept over 1,000 more on myth of in the kill, body distribution is shared amongst three departments. We can accept moderately pretty more.”
The centre welcomes all animals despite age, breed, or size. Exotic species hold integrated hamsters, dwarf hedgehogs, prairie canine, queer snakes, and even an African snakehead – the supreme donation got.
“The veterinary circle had never studied or had recordsdata about these animals’ anatomy sooner than, so the donations had been even more important to the final public,” notes Dr Ekkapol.
Most attention-grabbing animals that died from invasive cancer inflicting severe deformities, or zoonotic diseases love rabies and tuberculosis, can’t be licensed – and even unsure conditions are welcomed for overview. Basically the most a predominant requirement is vaccination in opposition to rabies for canine.
While colossal canine (15-25 kg) and medium cats (3-5 kg) are in particular precious for their considered organs, all sizes make a contribution meaningfully to veterinary training.
Donate
For pet owners brooding about donation, the diagram is easy. Straight away after a pet dies, situation the body in a plastic obtain and freeze it at 4 levels Celsius. Contact the centre and lift the body to the fifth ground of the Tiny Animal Effectively being facility Constructing within 24 hours.
Staff will cowl the pet’s history, reason for death, vaccination recordsdata, and any severe infections. House owners entire a consent kind, and the body is preserved in formaldehyde-free embalming fluid sooner than storage at very low temperatures.
Our bodies now not frozen immediately or saved longer than 24 hours can aloof be donated, though some organs would possibly maybe maybe maybe hold deteriorated. The a predominant component is the owner’s readiness to make this final gift.
A Neighborhood United
The annual merit-making ceremony represents more than spiritual observance.
“It shows cooperation, team spirit, and unity,” says Dr Ekkapol. “Whether or now not students, workers, or college, all people shares the same just: making merit and honouring the principals, and exhibiting gratitude to owners who donated bodies to us.”
Wipawanee, organising the ceremony for the first time, used to be struck by the significance.
“I felt gratitude in opposition to each owner who donated their most predominant,” she says. “I seen it as one thing truly mighty that we would maybe donate our pets to be principals. That’s the reason I wished to make this work staunch.”
The tournament permits owners to write farewell messages and students to right gratitude. It also raises funds to enhance students from deprived backgrounds.
Following the ceremony, cremation will occur at Thai Wat That Thong temple, with an ash-scattering ceremony the subsequent day.
For the student organisers – appropriate over ten folks managing all of the tournament – coordinating between a host of organisations proved now not easy yet rewarding.
“Everyone gave their all and tried very laborious,” Wipawanee shows. “The work came out moderately neatly.”
She hopes the ceremony helps students perceive the depth of householders’ luxuriate in for their donated pets. “It’s going to make us realise we want to raise a glimpse at more tough to alter into staunch veterinarians,” she observes.
A Message to Pet House owners
Dr Ekkapol affords heartfelt attributable to all donors.
“On behalf of the College of Veterinary Science and the Animal Cadaver Donation Centre, I’d like to sincerely thank each owner who donated their pet’s body to be a most predominant,” he says. “I must recount that it be truly a complex resolution to donate a pet that we care for. But this sacrifice transforms into recordsdata and creates professional inspiration for a couple of veterinarians. I must thank you for this.”
For pet owners contemplating this final act of luxuriate in, the centre stands ready to honour both pet and owner with dignity and just.
By diagram of donation, preferred companions change into eternal academics, their contributions echoing thru generations of veterinarians who will love limitless animals in flip.
As Wipawanee notes, whereas students already delight in consciousness of this sacrifice, wider participation in ceremonies and actions would toughen the community.
“If there are events love this, if folks would possibly maybe maybe maybe presumably aid organise them, that will maybe maybe presumably be staunch,” she suggests.
Within the aloof dignity of Sala Phra Kiao, surrounded by incense and flowers, the calm academics got their final honours – a testament to love that transcends death and serves existence itself.