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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Titanic, a symbol of hubris and human tragedy, has been a source of fascination for more than 112 years.

But the fact is, the sunken ocean liner was more than just movie fodder or a deep-sea explorer’s holy grail, it was a very real ship on which more than 1,500 people died.

And yet, whilst experts, using the most sophisticated submersible and underwater filming equipment, have found some extraordinary relics from the wreckage, they have never found any skeletons or bones.

“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, director of the iconic 1997 film, told the New York Times back in 2012.

“We’ve seen clothing. We’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we’ve never seen any human remains.”

Given that Cameron has visited and explored the wreck some 33 times (and claims to have spent more time on the ship than the ship’s captain), if he hasn’t seen any human remains we can assume that there really aren’t any there. So why is this?

It’s a question that has recently been perplexing Reddit users but, luckily, it has some relatively simple answers.

Whilst there was a notoriously insufficient number of lifeboats on the ship, many passengers and crew members still managed to put on life jackets. This means that they remained buoyant even after they succumbed to the freezing cold waters of the Atlantic.

And so, when a storm followed the sinking of the “unsinkable” ship, they were likely swept away from the site of the wreckage and carried further away over subsequent weeks and years by ocean currents.

“The issue you have to deal with is, at depths below about 3,000 feet (around 914 meters), you pass below what's called the calcium carbonate compensation depth,” deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard explained to NPR back in 2009.

“And the water in the deep sea is under saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of. For example, on the Titanic and on the Bismarck, those ships are below the calcium carbonate compensation depth, so once the critters eat their flesh and expose the bones, the bones dissolve,” he said.

Nevertheless, some people believe that there may still be some preserved bodies in sealed off parts of the ship, such as the engine room.

This is because fresh oxygen-rich water that scavengers rely on may not have been able to enter these areas.

Nevertheless, more than a century since the tragedy, it seems likely that such searches for remains would be fruitless.

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Asian Elephant Calf Makes her Public Debut at DC's National Zoo

Linh Mai, a 10-week-old Asian elephant calf, copies "auntie" Swarna reaching into the hay feeder during her public debut at the National Zoo, in Washington, Wednesday, April 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Linh Mai, a 10-week-old Asian elephant calf, copies "auntie" Swarna reaching into the hay feeder during her public debut at the National Zoo, in Washington, Wednesday, April 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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Asian Elephant Calf Makes her Public Debut at DC's National Zoo

Linh Mai, a 10-week-old Asian elephant calf, copies "auntie" Swarna reaching into the hay feeder during her public debut at the National Zoo, in Washington, Wednesday, April 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Linh Mai, a 10-week-old Asian elephant calf, copies "auntie" Swarna reaching into the hay feeder during her public debut at the National Zoo, in Washington, Wednesday, April 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The hottest new celebrity in Washington, D.C., is Asian elephant calf Linh Mai, who made her public debut Wednesday at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. She is the first elephant calf born at the zoo in 25 years.

Mother elephant Nhi Linh gave birth to Linh Mai on Feb. 2 after nearly two years of pregnancy.

Robbie Clark, the zoo's elephant manager, said, “Linh Mai is a hoot, she's a fantastic little elephant to get to know.”

“She's very curious,” Clark added, according to The Associated Press. “She's learning how to be quite playful with the enrichment and the environment that she's living in, and she's confident.”

The Asian elephants at the National Zoo live in an expansive area called Elephant Trails, which contains outdoor walkways and pools. Fans who can't visit Washington can check out Linh Mai on the zoo's elephant cam.

Varieties

Gibraltar's Monkeys Find Clever Way to Avoid Junk Food Bellyache

FILE PHOTO: Gibraltar monkeys play on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar overlooking the colony April 16, 2008. REUTERS/Anton Meres/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Gibraltar monkeys play on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar overlooking the colony April 16, 2008. REUTERS/Anton Meres/File Photo
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Gibraltar's Monkeys Find Clever Way to Avoid Junk Food Bellyache

FILE PHOTO: Gibraltar monkeys play on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar overlooking the colony April 16, 2008. REUTERS/Anton Meres/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Gibraltar monkeys play on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar overlooking the colony April 16, 2008. REUTERS/Anton Meres/File Photo

On the tourist-packed Rock of Gibraltar, one of the most common sights is monkeys begging for food - and sometimes stealing sweet and salty snacks from unsuspecting visitors.

Scientists now have documented an unusual behavior among these macaques that may help them ward off a bellyache from all this junk food.

Researchers said the monkeys have been observed eating soil more frequently, a behavior they said may help the macaques avoid stomach upset from consuming human snacks.

They found that soil-eating was more common in groups of monkeys that consumed more food from tourists, including chocolate, crisps and ice cream - items high in sugar, fat and dairy, and low in fiber.

"We propose the idea that human food, being not adapted to their natural diet, triggers upset stomachs, and potentially microbiome disruption, of which negative effects are buffered by the soil components," said Sylvain Lemoine, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England and lead author of ⁠the study published ⁠on Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports.

If compared to something in humans, soil-eating "likely acts as antacids," Lemoine said, adding that more research is needed to understand its effects on gut bacteria.

The researchers tracked Barbary macaques living in Gibraltar, a British territory at the southern tip of Spain, between August 2022 and April 2024. The macaques – around 230 animals across eight groups – comprise the only free-ranging monkey population in Europe.

The monkeys live in close contact with the hordes of tourists who visit the site.

Tourists often feed the monkeys - or have their snacks stolen - despite the animals ⁠also receiving fruits, vegetables and seeds at designated feeding platforms managed by local authorities.

Barbary macaques, native to North Africa, are thought to have arrived in Gibraltar during medieval Moorish rule. They later became a symbol of British control after legend has it they helped alert troops to an 18th-century surprise attack.

Their population later dwindled during World War Two, prompting British leader Winston Churchill to order simian reinforcements from Morocco and Algeria - animals from which most of today's macaques are believed to have descended.

The deliberate consumption of soil, chalk or clay is called geophagy. It is seen across many animal species, including primates such as chimpanzees, lemurs and other macaques.

"We don't know the exact action of soil within the gut, but soils, particularly those rich in clay, are known to alleviate gut pH (acidity), adsorb toxins, plaster the stomach and modify microbiome composition," Lemoine told Reuters. "I would not say that soil ⁠helps digest junk food, ⁠but that likely helps them feel better during a rough digestion," Lemoine added.

Researchers documented 46 instances of geophagy across the Gibraltar monkey population.

The behavior was especially common in areas with heavy tourist traffic and peaked in summer, when visitor numbers are highest, while one group of monkeys with no access to human food showed no soil-eating at all, they said.

The study suggests the behavior may be socially learned. Different groups of the monkeys favor specific types of soil, and most soil-eating occurs in the presence of other macaques, giving younger individuals a chance to observe and copy.

The findings show how primates can adapt to changing environments in ways similar to humans and learn these behaviors from one another, Lemoine added.

Lemoine noted the findings could influence tourist behavior, potentially helping discourage illegal feeding. However, there are concerns it could have the opposite effect if visitors expect to be able to trigger unusual behavior.

"There is no systematic association between immediate junk food consumption and subsequent soil-eating. It happens that way in some cases, but generally they don't immediately eat the soil after having some human food," Lemoine said.

Varieties

NASA Unveils New Space Telescope to Give 'Atlas of the Universe'

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaks about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after it was unveiled to the public at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 21, 2026. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaks about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after it was unveiled to the public at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 21, 2026. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
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NASA Unveils New Space Telescope to Give 'Atlas of the Universe'

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaks about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after it was unveiled to the public at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 21, 2026. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaks about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after it was unveiled to the public at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 21, 2026. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)

NASA unveiled a new telescope on Tuesday to scan vast swathes of the universe for planets outside our solar system and probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

The Roman space telescope is expected to discover tens of thousands of planets, possibly offering clarity about how many could be out there.

"Roman will give the Earth a new atlas of the universe," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told a news conference at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the telescope went on display.

The 12-meter (39-feet), silvery contraption with massive solar panels will be transported to Florida ahead of a launch into space aboard a SpaceX rocket planned for September at the earliest.

Roman, which took more than $4 billion and over a decade to build, is named after astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, nicknamed the "Mother of Hubble" for her role in developing the landmark space telescope.

Thirty-six years after Hubble launched into space, revolutionizing astronomical observations, NASA hopes Roman will help to shed light on questions that remain unresolved.

Boasting a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble's, the telescope will sweep across vast regions of space from its position 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth.

The telescope will send 11 terabytes of data a day down to Earth, said Mark Melton, a systems engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center.

"In the first year, we'll have sent down more data than Hubble will have for its entire life," he told AFP.

The telescope's wide-angle lens will allow NASA to conduct a census of the objects that make up our universe, said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

"Roman will discover tens of thousands of new planets outside our solar system. It will reveal billions of galaxies, thousands of supernovae and tens of billions of stars," she said.

This wealth of information will enable NASA to tease out areas of interest that can then be investigated by complementary telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

But Roman will also study the invisible -- dark matter and dark energy, whose origins remain unknown but which are thought to constitute 95 percent of our universe.

Dark matter is believed to be the glue that holds galaxies together, while dark energy pulls them apart by making the universe expand faster and faster over time.

Thanks to its infrared vision, the telescope will be able to observe light emitted by celestial bodies billions of years ago, effectively looking back in time to hopefully discover more about the two phenomena.

Complementing the work of Europe's Euclid space telescope and the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, Roman will probe "how the dark matter structures itself throughout cosmic time" and "calculate how fast galaxies are moving away from us," Darryl Seligman, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University, told AFP.

These discoveries could fundamentally change our understanding of the structure of our universe, said astrophysicist Julie McEnery, who led the Roman project.

"If Roman wins a Nobel Prize at some point, it's probably for something we haven't even thought about or questioned yet," said Melton.