Body Farm Observation

Theory Essay In Criminal Justice Class we spent almost 3 weeks doing a body farm. We started it on October 4th and finished it on October 31st. The whole decomposition process didn’t take nearly as long as we had originally anticipated. Every day except weekends and fall break we went out to the “farm” to observe any changes to the bodies. For some pigs the decomposition happened rapidly. For others it took quite a bit longer. After watching the pugs for a while we realized that some pugs seemed to decompose significantly faster than the others. We found that pig in its natural state showed signs of decomposition faster than any of the other piglets. The burnt piglet went second fastest. The partially buried piglet followed closely behind. Since we couldn’t watch the piglets that were buried in the box we theorized that it decomposed slowest due to the fact that it was not open to the elements. After the boxes were opened on the last day we saw that our guess was right since the piglets were still partially whole. There were varying results for on whether the piglets that were naked decomposed faster or if the clothed ones decomposed faster. The results depended on whether the piglet was on the cement, in the grass, hanging, or buried. On the cement we found that the clothed piglet decomposed
After doing some research we found that flies use smell. They use their antenna to smell and locate the rotting bodies. This makes sense because the flies were able to find the buried piglets even though there was hardly any piglet visible. It took the flies longer to find the buried ones than the unburied ones, which was most likely due to the dirt covering the bodies. Another realization we made while researching the flies was that the white substance we saw on the piglets on day fourteen was actually fly