What if a forensic anthropologist is trying to identify a body that has been decaying for a long enough period of time, that the body has has decomposed so much that only the skeleton remains? without question... identification will be a lot tougher, but thanks to body farm research this be a little easier. Body farms are literally body farms... corpses are allowed to rot on the ground so interactions with the body and the soil can be studied.
So what happens when you die? well first you heart stop beating of course. When your heart stop beating, no oxygen is transported throughout the body and your cells die. Blood starts to drain from your capillaries into deeper potion of the body, which is why you start turning pale. Some more gross stuff happens (rigor mortis, algor mortis) but for the sake of our stomachs I'll just tell you about the important gross stuff. bacteria breaks down dead cells and decomposing tissue emits green a green tissue along with methane gas and hydrogen sulfide gas. Did I mention flies love this stuff? Well they do. Flies and their maggots will eat away at a corpse and, at the same time, administer enzymes on the corpse to decompose it even faster. Also the dryer the environment the slower it takes for a body to decompose. Ok, the gross part is over, sorry about that.
Body farms allow forensic anthropologists to study how the environment effects the decomposing body. There are actually a small amount of universities that have body farms for research (University of Tennessee was the first). The University of Tennessee tests how bodies decompose in a variety of settings, such as above ground under ground, or even in the trunk of a car.
The acidity of soil can indicate how long a body has been depositing fluids into the ground. Enzymes for the body can also kill off some surrounding plants. The amount of bones remaining in a corpse can also indicate how long it was there because scavenging animals tend to carry away bones when they discover a body.
This research is helping forensic science in identifying bodies. Needless to say, these body farms can give rise to some ethical concerns. Also the University of Tennessee will keep the skeleton of a corpse, after it has served its purpose on the body farm, if the family doesn't want it back (They now have over 700 skeletons in their collection).
http://science.howstuffworks.com/body-farm.htm
1 comment:
I would hope that these Universities would have permission to look at a person's body, whether the permission is in writing from the person who passed away or from the family members. The part that bothers me about this procedure is that the researchers look at the corpse and environmental surroundings and then ask if the family wants the body back. Yikes! Seeing a close relative in skeletal form would not be something I could do.
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