The beetles are incredible creatures, used in museums and forensic labs to delicately eat the dead flesh off a skeleton without destroying the bones themselves. Dermestids are
happy to wade into a gruesome, sticky mass of decaying flesh and elicately clean around even the tiniest of bones. But don’t worry about visiting a museum and accidentally falling into a vat of dermestids: despite being “flesh-eating” beetles, they aren’t interested in the living.)
The deeper he is buried, the farther away he is from oxygen, microbes, and other things that speed up the decomposition process.
Trees produce resin, that gummy, sticky substance oozing from the bark that’s almost impossible to get off your hands even after you wash them seven times. The trees use that resin as protection against various pests and animals that might harm them.
a dead person will look paler than before, especially in places like their lips and fingernails. They lose their healthy pinkish color and start to turn colorless and waxy, because the blood that once ran right under the surface of the skin has started to succumb to gravity. When you think of a ghastly pale corpse, it’s a phenomenon as dull as blood loss in surface tissues.
Why close eyes after death- In as little as half an hour, the iris and pupil cloud over and turn milky because the fluid under the cornea has stagnated, like a creepy little bog.
Liver mortis- blood pool of purple color, Once the blood starts to settle, you’re going to see more dramatic color changes. When you’re alive, your blood is made of different components mixed together. But when the blood stops moving, the heavier red blood cells fall slowly out of the mix, like sugar settling to the bottom of a glass of water.
Interestingly, livor mortis can be useful to forensic examiners determining how and where someone died. The patches of color, and how intensely purple they are, make a difference. For instance, if the livor mortis is all over the front of the body, that means the corpse has been lying facedown for several hours, giving the blood time to pool there.
However, livor mortis patches won’t be found on the parts of the body pressed up against something—the floor, for example—because the pressure means the teeny tiny vessels near the body’s surface can’t fill up with blood. This is yet another way investigators can tell if a body has been lying in a certain position, or on top of something
livor mortis is bright cherry red, that might mean the person died in the
cold, or by inhaling carbon monoxide (maybe smoke from a fire). If the
livor mortis is deep purple or pink, that might mean the person suffocated,
or died of heart failure. Finally, if a person has lost a lot of blood, you might
not find any livor mortis at all
Welcome to putrefaction. This is when the famous green color of death
comes into its own, The green colors appear first in the lower abdomen. That’s the bacteria
from the colon breaking free and starting to take over. They are liquefying
the cells of the organs, which means fluids are sloshing free. The stomach
swells as gas starts to accumulate from the bacteria’s “digestive action”
(i.e., bacteria farts). As the bacteria multiply and spread, so does the green
discoloration, eventually ripening to a darker green or black.
The body is now on a complicated journey, carried along by autolysis
and putrefying bacteria. New patterns of color arise. You will start to see
signs of a venous patterning, or marbling, of blood vessels near the surface
of the skin. This is the classic “purple vein” effect that movie makeup
people use to show somebody has been infected by a zombie virus. In a
corpse, this marbling is the visible sign of blood vessels decaying and
hemoglobin separating from the blood. The hemoglobin stains the skin,
producing delicate color schemes in shades of red, dark purple, green, and
black. The hemoglobin ring breaks down into bilirubin (turning you yellow)
and biliverdin (turning you green).
This technicolor show is happening alongside all the other visible
effects of putrefaction, like swelling, “purging,” and blistering or peeling of
the skin. The color will change so profoundly that you will no longer recognize the person or be able to tell the age or complexion they were in
life.
the body will either be embalmed (a
chemical process that slows decomposition), or put in a refrigeration unit
(the cold air slows decomposition).
In the first ten minutes of the cremation, the flames attack the body’s
soft tissue—all the squishy parts, if you will. Muscles, skin, organs, and fat
sizzle, shrink, and evaporate. The bones of the skull and ribs start to
emerge. The top of the skull pops off and the blackened brain gets zapped
away by the flames. The human body is roughly 60 percent water, and that
H2O—along with other body fluids—evaporates right up the machine’s
chimney. It takes just a little over an hour for all the organic material in the
human body to disintegrate and vaporize, What are we left with at the end of a cremation? Bones. Hot bones. We call this pulverized mess of molten bones “cremated remains” or, more commonly, ashes
But what about a person who weighs, say, 450 pounds? Surely those
ashes will be heavier. Nope. Much of that weight is fat. Underneath,
remember, their skeleton is pretty much identical to everyone else’s. Since
fat falls into the category of organic material, it will burn up during the
cremation process.
There is a circular muscle called the
external anal sphincter that snuggles around the anus and locks down the
fecal prison, preventing poop from leaving our bodies until we’re ready
But when we die, our brains no longer send these messages to our
Muscles. During rigor mortis your muscles seize up tight, but after several
Days they relax. The good ship decomposition has set sail, and all muscles
relax at that point, including the ones that keep poop (and pee, for that
matter) inside.
Rigor mortis is more than just the name of a python I used to own.
Rigor mortis is the Latin name for the stiffening of the muscles that starts
around three hours after death (even sooner in very hot or tropical
environments). I’ve been studying rigor mortis for years and I’m still not
sure I totally understand the science of it. The muscles in your body need
ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in order to relax. But ATP requires oxygen.
No more breathing means no more oxygen, which means no more ATP,
which means the muscles seize up and can’t relax. This chemical change,
collectively called rigor mortis, starts around your eyelids and jaw and
spreads through every muscle in the body, even the organs. Rigor mortis
makes the muscles incredibly stiff. Once it sets in, that body ain’t movin’
from whatever position it is in. Funeral directors have to massage and flex
the joints and muscles over and over to get them to move, a process called
“breaking rigor.” This process sounds noisy, full of cracks and pops. But
we’re not snapping bones; the sounds are coming from the muscles.
I mention these two horror stories to make an important point: they are
the exceptions that prove the rule. For the most part, animals won’t dig up
human graves. There are several reasons why. First, the correct amount of
soil laid on top of the body creates a scent barrier. Second, the soil not only
covers up the powerful smell, but it actively works to decompose the body,
leaving behind a stenchless skeleton. The soil is magic.
Cholera is spread through a poop cycle: the
bacteria that causes cholera gets into your intestines and gives you
horrendous watery diarrhea for days on end. Left untreated, it can kill you.
If that horrendous watery diarrhea gets into the water supply, it will create
unsafe drinking water, which then causes more cholera
Body Worlds is far from the first time humans have prepared corpses for
long-term preservation and display. people with special knowledge produced mummies using herbs, tar, plant oils, and other natural products, along with techniques like removing organs and hollowing out body cavities. Preservation became more precise during the Renaissance, when people figured out that you could inject fluids directly into a corpse’s veins and the body’s circulatory system would carry them to all the corpse’s nooks and crannies. Ink, mercury, wine, turpentine, camphor, vermilion, and “Prussian blue” (ferric hexacyanoferrate) were just a few of the compounds used.
This brings us to plastination, the preservation technique used by Body
Worlds. If you choose to donate your body and be plastinated, you’ll be
preserved with formaldehyde, dissected, and dehydrated. Your fluids and
your squishy parts (water and fat) get sucked out when your body is dunked
in a freezing bath of acetone, which you may know as the main chemical in
nail polish remover. The acetone takes the place of water and fat in your
body’s cells. Remember how your body contains around 60 percent water?
Now it’s around 60 percent nail polish remover
In the most important step, your acetone-filled body is then boiled in
another bath, this time a bath of molten plastics like silicone and polyester,
inside a vacuum-sealed chamber. The vacuum forces the acetone to boil and
evaporate out of your cells. Then the molten plastic floods in. Now, with a
little hands-on help from the living, your plastic-pumped corpse can strike a
pose.
A whole pizza in your stomach
means food hanging out, rotting, destroying the preservation vibes that
embalmers are trying to achieve. That’s one of the reasons why they use a
tool called the trocar. A trocar is a large, long needle that an embalmer will
poke into your abdomen, just below your belly button. The idea is to stick it
in there, puncture your lungs, stomach, and abdomen, and suck out
whatever’s inside. This includes gas, fluids, poop, and yes, your pizza
juices.
Shamov and his team removed 70 percent of a living dog’s circulating
blood volume. In other words, they took out nearly three-quarters of all the
blood in the dog’s body. Then the team washed out the depleted bloodstream with warm saline, to bring the total level of exsanguination (a
cool word that means the draining of blood) to 90 percent, a lethal level.
Without a beating heart to pump the blood out, cadaveric blood
donation requires gravity to do the work. If pathologists need to get blood
out of a cadaver, the simple option is to open a large vein in the neck and
then tip the head down
But let’s go for an even simpler explanation, and look at another group
of people who experience the eerie tunnel of light: fighter pilots. Flying at
high speeds can cause something called a hypotensive syncope, which
happens when there isn’t enough blood and oxygen getting to the brain.
When this occurs, the pilot’s vision starts to go, with the edges going first—
creating the experience of looking down a bright tunnel. Sound familiar?
Scientists believe that seeing this light at the end of the tunnel is the
result of retinal ischemia, which happens when there isn’t enough blood
reaching the eye. As less blood flows to the eyes, vision is reduced. Being
in a state of extreme fear can also cause retinal ischemia. Both fear and
decrease in oxygen are associated with dying. In this context, the extreme
white tunnel vision characteristic of NDEs starts to make much more sense.
Scientists believe that seeing this light at the end of the tunnel is the
result of retinal ischemia, which happens when there isn’t enough blood
reaching the eye. As less blood flows to the eyes, vision is reduced. Being
in a state of extreme fear can also cause retinal ischemia. Both fear and
decrease in oxygen are associated with dying. In this context, the extreme
white tunnel vision characteristic of NDEs starts to make much more sense.
You have blowflies, which can smell death from up to ten miles away. You have carrion beetles, which
devour dried muscle. necrophages, the unsung heroes of the natural world. They are the death eaters
Remember the dermestid beetle? The helpful cuties we’d enlist to clean
your parents’ skulls? Their job is to eat all the flesh off without damaging
the bone. Let’s be clear: we don’t want them to eat the bone. Especially
because other methods of flesh removal (like harsh chemicals) will not only
hurt the bones, but might damage certain types of evidence, like marks on
bones, which could be useful in criminal investigations. That’s why you
bring in a colony of thousands of dermestids to do the dirty work. Plus,
while you were over here complaining that they don’t eat enough bones, the
beetles were also eating skin, hair, and feathers!
Osedax means “bone eater” or “bone devourer” in Latin.) Bone worms start as tiny larvae, floating out in the vast blackness of the deep ocean. Suddenly, emerging from the void above is a big ol’ dead creature, like a whale or an elephant seal. The bone worm attaches, and the feast begins. To be fair, even Osedax don’t really devour the minerals in the bone. Instead, they burrow into the bone searching for collagen and lipids to eat. After the whale is gone, the worms die, but not before they release enough larvae to travel the currents waiting for another carcass to comes along.
Instead of digging right in to the frozen ground, some cemeteries will
attempt to thaw it first. There are a few ways to do this. Heated blankets can
be laid over the future grave, which is pretty adorable. Lit charcoal can be
spread over a future plot. There are also metal domes large enough to be
placed over the grave, heated inside by propane. This setup sort of looks
like there’s a giant barbecue grill going in the middle of a cemetery.
The reason dead bodies don’t start smelling right away is because the
classic “scent of decay” comes from decomposition, and decomposition
emerges over several days. Remember, when a person dies, the bacteria in
their intestines do not die with them. Not only do these gut bacteria not die,
they are still hungry. Hangry. Ready to break down your body into organic
material for other purposes. It’s not just hangry gut bacteria, either. The human body is teeming with life, a whole ecosystem of microbes. As they break down their brand-new
food source—your dead body—the microbes give off gas made of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. The prime stinkers here tend to be sulfurcontaining
compounds, which makes sense if you’ve ever experienced an especially potent and sulfuric eggy fart. Sulfur is the culprit in many a stink.
Two of the best-known chemicals in dead body aroma are the aptly named putrescine and cadaverine (after “putrid” and “cadaver”). Scientists
believe these foul smells are acting as necromones, that is, chemicals that trigger attraction or avoidance around dead things. If you are a cadaver dog
or blowfly, these smells tell you you’ve found the dead body you’re looking for. If you are a scavenger animal that eats carrion (decayed animal), these
necromones will smell like a delicious lunch
Take the British admiral Horatio Nelson. He was killed by a French sniper on the deck of his own ship during the Napoleonic Wars. His fleet
won (congrats), but their leader was still dead, and required a hero’s burial back home. So, to preserve him for the journey, his crew stuck Nelson’s
body in a barrel filled with brandy and aqua vitae (concentrated alcohol, literally “water of life”—ironic, no?). It took a month to sail back to Britain,
and during the voyage Nelson’s gases built up in the tiny barrel, causing the lid to pop off, terrifying the watchman. Ever since, a rumor has persisted that the ship’s sailors took turns sneaking sips of the alcoholic “embalming fluid” from Lord Nelson’s barrel. Allegedly, they would use pieces of macaroni as tiny straws, and then top off the brandy barrel with less desirable wine to hide their crime.
Dover Port Mortuary, located at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The mortuary is overseen by the Air Force and is the world’s largest order to grow hair and nails, your body needs to be making glucose, which in turn allows new cells to be created. In your fingernails, the new cells shove the old cells forward, growing the nail. It’s almost like pushing the toothpaste out of the tube. It’s the same story with your hair. New cells created at the base of the hair follicle push the old hair out of your face and
head. But that whole glucose-making cell-creating process stops after you die. Death means no new nail, no luscious new locks. When the skin on your hands dehydrates after death, the nail beds pull back, revealing more nail. The nails might seem longer, but it’s not the nail growing, it’s the skin revealing additional nail that was there all along.
Same principle with hair. It might look like a dead man is growing out his stubble, but that’s not real hair growth. It’s his face drying out and shrinking to reveal the stubble. In short: it’s not that there’s more hair or nails, it’s that there’s less plump, living skin around the hair and nails. Two-thousandyear- old mystery solved.
In the next step, the newly eviscerated body was dried out. The future mummy (now without its organs) was packed inside and out with natron, a salt mixture that the Egyptians collected from dry lake beds. The sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate in natron would absorb water and desiccate the body over the course of thirty to seventy days. All the enzymes that work to dissolve our dead flesh require water, so dehydrating the body like beef jerky prevents those enzymes from doing their sinister decay work.