Jan 21, 2024 11:24 PM
https://bigthink.com/13-8/biosphere-tech...formation/
INTRO: Australian police probably expected a gruesome scene when they checked on a 69-year-old man suspected to have been dead for days. But when they opened the door to his home, they didn’t expect the approximately 30 cats that came flooding out. Inside, they found the man’s body on the floor, with his face gnawed down to the skull and his heart and lungs gone. As if to dispel any doubt about what happened, one cat was still sitting inside the man’s emptied chest cavity.
“You’d think it was a bear or something,” says Roger Byard, a forensic pathologist at the University of Adelaide who wrote about the case in 2020. (Note for the squeamish: There are disturbing images in the paper.)
The Australian incident wasn’t unusual. “I think we have to come to the conclusion that our pets will eat us,” says Carolyn Rando, a forensic anthropologist at University College London. “It’s just a fact of life.”
That presents problems for investigators. It can be difficult to determine whether a death involved toxins if the internal organs have been eaten, for instance, or whether a sexual crime has been committed if the genitals are gone. A new study in Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology presents ways for detectives to determine whether an animal scavenged a body, and what kind of animal it was, including a flowchart for deciding how and when to collect certain data from the scene. (This paper also contains disturbing images.)
Previous studies have revealed some differences between canine and feline scavenging. Dogs tend to eat the face and throats of humans, then break the ribs and chew on bones. Cats, on the other hand, often strip skin from the nose, upper lip, and fingers (the same places, Rando notes, that they nip at when playing with a living owner). Scavenging is more common with dogs than cats, Byard adds, “but I don’t trust either of them.” (MORE - details)
INTRO: Australian police probably expected a gruesome scene when they checked on a 69-year-old man suspected to have been dead for days. But when they opened the door to his home, they didn’t expect the approximately 30 cats that came flooding out. Inside, they found the man’s body on the floor, with his face gnawed down to the skull and his heart and lungs gone. As if to dispel any doubt about what happened, one cat was still sitting inside the man’s emptied chest cavity.
“You’d think it was a bear or something,” says Roger Byard, a forensic pathologist at the University of Adelaide who wrote about the case in 2020. (Note for the squeamish: There are disturbing images in the paper.)
The Australian incident wasn’t unusual. “I think we have to come to the conclusion that our pets will eat us,” says Carolyn Rando, a forensic anthropologist at University College London. “It’s just a fact of life.”
That presents problems for investigators. It can be difficult to determine whether a death involved toxins if the internal organs have been eaten, for instance, or whether a sexual crime has been committed if the genitals are gone. A new study in Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology presents ways for detectives to determine whether an animal scavenged a body, and what kind of animal it was, including a flowchart for deciding how and when to collect certain data from the scene. (This paper also contains disturbing images.)
Previous studies have revealed some differences between canine and feline scavenging. Dogs tend to eat the face and throats of humans, then break the ribs and chew on bones. Cats, on the other hand, often strip skin from the nose, upper lip, and fingers (the same places, Rando notes, that they nip at when playing with a living owner). Scavenging is more common with dogs than cats, Byard adds, “but I don’t trust either of them.” (MORE - details)