What Pig Carcasses Could Teach Coroners About Human Death
Burial at Sea Dave Thompson Burying pigs at sea turns out to be a good way to study how human bodies decay. A dead pig is a good proxy for a dead person: It's roughly the size of a human torso, it has no fur, and its gut holds similar bacteria. These parallels mean that injury and decay are comparable in the two species, which can help forensic pathologists learn more about how corpses behave. On land, this dark research is easy-place the pig somewhere, and watch it rot. But what about bodies at sea? When a corpse turns up in a marine environment, whether as a result of murder, accident, or tsunami, coroners and pathologists don't have the information they need to determine even the time of death. In 2000, forensics researcher Gail Anderson, of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, was the first to simulate a marine...