YouTuber Michael Sorensen, who runs the channel Horses under the handle @horsesonyt, listed a genuine human skull for sale on his online store at horses.land for $3,000, describing it as “ethically sourced.”
The product page states that each skull differs in color and precise shape from the one pictured. Shipping is estimated at three weeks. The item is currently out of stock and cannot be shipped outside the United States or to Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota, or Florida, states that restrict the sale of human remains.
The listing provides no information about the origin of the remains or any verification process for the ethical sourcing claim. Sorensen has not publicly addressed the details of how the skulls were obtained.
A Dexerto report on the listing published September 19, 2026, documented the listing’s terms. Viewers who found it shared screenshots on Reddit, where reactions centered on surprise and discomfort rather than widespread anger.
One Reddit commenter wrote, according to Dexerto:
“I know it says they’re ethically sourced on the page, but there weren’t any details about how and where from. I guess this is probably legal where he’s from, but I won’t lie, it’s very off-putting.”
The commercial trade in human remains is legal in the majority of U.S. states. The wider trade is legal in most US states, and Reuters has previously investigated how freely body parts change hands there, according to Dexerto. Sellers often market items as coming from former medical or educational collections, and the gray area is almost entirely about how the remains were obtained in the first place.
Critics and researchers have long pointed out that many older skeletons entered the market without documented consent from the deceased or their families, with remains historically drawn disproportionately from marginalized groups. Buyers typically receive only the seller’s assurance of provenance.
The trade in human remains for medical study has a long and well-documented history. According to Wikipedia’s entry on body snatching, the practice of illicitly removing corpses from graves, morgues, and other burial sites (commonly referred to in the 17th through 19th centuries as “resurrectionists” or “resurrection men”) supplied medical schools with cadavers for anatomical study. Body snatching declined after the passage of anatomy acts in the United Kingdom and the United States that required legal donation of unclaimed bodies, but contemporary cases continue to be reported.
According to public descriptions of the channel, Horses features long-form video essays on history, philosophy, and culture. The store sells the skull alongside standard merchandise such as shirts and hoodies.
X aggregator post from Dexerto (@Dexerto) circulated a paraphrase of the original reporting the following day, drawing more than 2,600 likes.
