If you can keep blood and oxygen going to the brain I don't see why you couldn't keep a head a live. I have heard that when your head is cut off you are aware until your brain runs out of oxygen in about two or three minutes. Kind of a creepy thought.

heard about the chicken who survived with half a brain? perhaps this happened to the dog, a piece of the brain was still present and in turn could well, keep it alive.

The Isolated Head of a Dog
What could be more horrific than creating a two-headed dog? What about keeping the severed head of a dog alive apart from its body!

Ever since the carnage of the French Revolution, when the guillotine sent thousands of severed heads tumbling into baskets, scientists had wondered whether it would be possible to keep a head alive apart from its body, but it wasn't until the late 1920s that someone managed to pull off this feat.

Soviet physician Sergei Brukhonenko developed a primitive heart-lung machine he called an "autojector," and with this device he succeeded in keeping the severed head of a dog alive. He displayed one of his living dog heads in 1928 before an international audience of scientists at the Third Congress of Physiologists of the USSR. To prove that the head lying on the table really was alive, he showed that it reacted to stimuli. Brukhonenko banged a hammer on the table, and the head flinched. He shone light in its eyes, and the eyes blinked. He even fed the head a piece of cheese, which promptly popped out the esophageal tube on the other end.

Brukhonenko's severed dog head became the talk of Europe and inspired the playwright George Bernard Shaw to muse, "I am even tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature."

Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dogs
In 1954 Vladimir Demikhov shocked the world by unveiling a surgically created monstrosity: A two-headed dog. He created the creature in a lab on the outskirts of Moscow by grafting the head, shoulders, and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a mature German shepherd.

Demikhov paraded the dog before reporters from around the world. Journalists gasped as both heads simultaneously lapped at bowls of milk, and then cringed as the milk from the puppy's head dribbled out the unconnected stump of its esophageal tube. The Soviet Union proudly boasted that the dog was proof of their nation's medical preeminence.

Over the course of the next fifteen years, Demikhov created a total of twenty of his two-headed dogs. None of them lived very long, as they inevitably succumbed to problems of tissue rejection. The record was a month.

Demikhov explained that the dogs were part of a continuing series of experiments in surgical techniques, with his ultimate goal being to learn how to perform a human heart and lung transplant. Another surgeon beat him to this goal — Dr. Christian Baarnard in 1967 — but Demikhov is widely credited with paving the way for it.

I'm not sure if someone posted this, but here we go anyway. I heard from my friend about this video and I looked it up. It was pretty weird but let me explain it first. So heres the story...apparently the Russians in 1940 did a experiment to see if a severed head can still live or along the lines of that. So they used a severed dog head (cruel isn't it) to test it, they hook the dog up to machines to make it survive, and then they poke his eyes and he starts to blink. The dog was alive at that point, and he took citrus acid (orange juice simply put) and put it on his face, eventually the dog starts to lick his mouth (that was kind of weird) and then they tap a hammer on the table, he starts to flinch his ears. So basically what I concluded was, Russian scientists did a experiment to see if a severed head could live, and to test that they poked his eyes to see if he blinks, they put orange juice around his mouth to see if he can still be able to use his tongue or test to see if he can still taste, then they tapped the hammer on the table to see if the dog can still hear. Now, is it true, or not? It doesn't sound very believable but I did a little research on it and I believe it is real. If anyone wants to see a video its right here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrIkUXwsNk

So what are your thoughts on this?

When the dog "head" flinches, what neck muscles and/or neck vertebrae are used to make the movement? It's just a head! The dog was drugged, his head poked through a hole in the table, and the so-called experiment was conducted. Seems like old Soviet propaganda or the old "bloody thumb" in the box joke.

They took a dead dog (the dog was already dead) and they cut his head and they contributed with blood to the head, this blood reached the brain and muscles along the head, and so keeping the brain alive, even after death!

It might be worth your while to view the video before offering explanations that don't explain the situation being discussed. Just a suggestion.

I also notice alot of people considering it as animal cruelty. I really doubt it's animale cruelty unless they actually show the dog's decapitation in the video.

I brought what I thought was an alread beaten to death large copperhead out of the woods one day. As I emptied it out of my backpack I could feel it squirm it's way out of it. As it fell off of the porch, we quickly went down and I chopped off its head (that I put in rubbing alchohol and it preserved for almost three years). I have heard of chickens flopping with their heads cut off, but what this snake did was fascinating. For twenty minutes we screwed with it, sticking sticks in its mouth to see what it would do. It took it's fangs and bit and crunched the sticks almost in a walking fashion up and down spewing a lot of venom. My friend sayed it hissed at the beggining. Anyway all I can say is that it was very interesting. Great snakeskin too!!

Also, Doesn't anyone think that maybe the rest of the dogs body was under the table? HOAX.

Real scientific methods and data collection would allow for multiple camera views and an angle to see how the linkage to the arteries actually operated.

Sounds like something from Futurama

Imagine for example; transplanting the head of somebody important to a criminals body.

I doubt very much that animal cruelty was even considered when these experiments were done.

Finally Got A Youtube membership and watched the video.... THAT IS DISGUSTING!!!! Is It Real Or CG?

just thought you might all be interested in this.
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2006/01/sovie..._experiment.mp4
you have to download it i'm afraid ><
interesting video though, where they drain all the blood from a dog so it is dead and revive it 10minutes later by pumping the blood back through it's body.
i've heard that scientists did it a few years ago except the dog was dead for around 3-4hours.
i can't vouch for it's authenticity as i found it randoly on the internet
interesting non the less.