Body Farm

This post is inspired by my friend Phoebe, from Greenberry’s Coffee Shop

Phoebe is a rising graduate student at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville.  Her field is Anthropology/Archeology.  Please give her full credit for the inspiration for this post

Drink coffee at Greenberry’s! 

WARNING:  PHOTOS MAY BE GRAPHIC

From Wikipedia

A body farm is a research facility where human decomposition after death can be scientifically studied in a variety of settings. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the decomposition process, permitting the development of techniques for extracting information (such as the timing and circumstances of death) from human remains. Body farm research is particularly important within forensic anthropology and related disciplines, and has applications in the fields of law enforcement, medical examination and crime scene investigation. There are currently three such facilities in the United States with the farm at Texas State University being the largest.

University of Tennessee – Knoxville

The original “Body Farm” (started by William Bass) is the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility located a few miles from downtown off of Alcoa Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee, behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Anthropologist Dr. William M. Bass became head of the university’s anthropology department in 1971, and as official state forensic anthropologist for Tennessee he was frequently consulted in police cases involving decomposed human remains. Since no facilities existed that specifically studied decomposition, in 1981 he opened the department’s first body farm.

It consists of a 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) wooded plot, surrounded by a razor wire fence. At any one time there will be a number of bodies placed in different settings throughout the facility and left to decompose. The bodies are exposed in a number of ways in order to provide insights into decomposition under varying conditions: for example, some are left out in the open or in the woods, some get buried in shallow graves or entombed in vaults, some have been left in car trunks or submerged in water. Detailed observations and records of the decomposition process are kept, including the sequence and speed of decomposition and the effects of insect activity, and afterward the skeletonized bones are removed from the plot and added to the Dr. William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection, to be used for research and teaching.

Bodies are obtained from various sources. Some have lain unclaimed at the medical examiner’s office, while over 300 people have voluntarily donated their bodies to the Body Farm. Appx. 120 bodies are donated to the facility every year. Perhaps the most famous person to donate his body for study was the anthropologist Grover Krantz, as described by his colleague David Hunt at the Smithsonian.

The University of Tennessee Body Farm is also used in the training of law enforcement officers in scene-of-crime skills and techniques.

You never get used to the smell.  Human decomposition has a very unique smell to it…not an identifiable odor, like a flower or a fruit. It’s a sort of combination of sulfur, ammonia, and rotting meat.

says Rebecca Wilson, Assistant Coordinator of the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center.  Wilson should know. Because of the nature of her job, she is very familiar with the Anthropological Research Facility, also known as the Body Farm.

From Encyclopedia Britannica

No Cows Here

The Body Farm is a unique outdoor classroom. It is designed to teach forensic anthropology students, as well as professionals in the medical and legal fields, how the human body decays and the role the natural world plays in the process. Located on approximately two acres in Knoxville, Tennessee, it is the dream-come-true of Dr. William Bass and the first research facility of its kind on the planet. The Body Farm may sound like a scene out of a horror movie, but the information gathered there has helped advance the field of forensic science all over the world.

The first time I went to the farm it certainly was not what I had expected.  I had an image of bodies strewn out everywhere. But it’s really not so bad. It doesn’t hit you in the face. The bodies are covered, so it’s not like you arrive and immediately see 15 just thrown out there.

Says Wilson.

But How Do the Bodies Get There?

Currently, there are 175 deceased people (or cadavers) contributing to the research at the facility. There is also a waiting list of interested people who, at their death, wish to become test subjects and help the research continue. According to Wilson, when a body, or “subject,” is received, it is given an identification number and placed on the grounds of the facility. Some are placed in the shade under shrubs or trees and others are left to bask in the Sun. Some bodies have been set on fire and others have been placed in a pool of water. Still others are placed at the request of medical and legal professionals to imitate situations that they have experienced or are currently investigating.

The most recent study involves a subject placed in a large garbage bin

says Wilson.

In the Limelight After Death

Research assistants pay close attention to all the bodies and take notes throughout the entire decomposition process. They post their observations and discoveries to a database that can be accessed by anyone in the medical or legal field. Police officers, death investigators, and crime lab specialists rely on the database for information that might help them with their investigations.

Information is gathered long after the researchers have gone home. A camera with night vision and a motion detector has been set up to monitor the role nocturnal mammals play in the decomposition process.

Our facility has been very influential in studying animal activity in relation to time since death.  Prior to our work there were no studies showing animals in real-time situations.

Luke Watson, a University of Tennessee Veterinary School student, says

animal marks on a bone can actually help a crime lab specialist solve a case. For instance, if a hiker finds a skeleton in the woods, and the shaft of the bones have been gnawed by squirrels, it can be determined that the bones are not recent and have been there for some time.

Wilson agrees.

Small rodents like rats or field mice like to gnaw on tissue, but a squirrel won’t touch a bone until it’s completely dry.  That means that a pathologist or medical examiner can look at a bone that has been gnawed on by squirrels and know that the bone has been in the woods for at least a year.”

Insects are crime solvers as well. Researchers at the facility have discovered that certain insects are present at different stages of decomposition. Because of this, a forensic entomologist (a person who studies bugs to help solve crimes) can determine the time of a person’s death, sometimes as close as to within an hour, simply by studying the various insect and animal activity that has occurred.

The Anthropological Research Facility may not look like your average classroom, and the subject that is studied is certainly not typical. However, the work done there is an innovative, hands-on approach to learning that has produced numerous advancements in the field of forensic science. Besides, no other classroom in the world can boast a waiting list of people who are dying to get in!

By Beth Drinnen

Beth Drinnen lives in Tennessee and visited the Forensic Anthropology Center to write this article. It is her first for ODYSSEY.

THE FIVE STAGES OF DECOMPOSITION

1. Fresh – Usually the stage when a police officer or medical examiner sees a body for the first time. During this stage, the body loses color due to cell death. Lividity, the pooling of blood inside the body, occurs and rigor mortis, the stiffening of muscles after death (from Latin for “stiffness” + “death”), sets in.
2. Discoloration – The skin takes on a greenish tinge from bacterial activity, and from molds and fungi growing on the body.
3. Bloating – All the gasses released from the dying cells cause swelling in the body.
4. Advanced Decomposition/Initial Skeletonization – All the fluids that were building up in the body begin to exit. They exit through the same places that they would if the body were still alive – the pores and other body openings, such as the mouth, nose, and anus. “One common misconception is that a body can burst in this phase,” says Wilson, “but that’s not true. A body, if left alone in this state, will not burst. It will simply deflate like an empty vacuum cleaner bag.”
5. Skeletonization – Very little soft tissue is left on the bones. Only the skeleton remains. B.D.

The Birth of the Body Farm

The Body Farm is the idea of Dr. William Bass, a former Forensic Anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee. Bass was frustrated about how little was known about decomposition of the human body. But it wasn’t until the descendants of Colonel William Shy, a Confederate war veteran, contacted him in 1977 and asked for his help in identifying some bones found on their land that Bass decided it was time to find out.

He examined the bones and figured out the person’s race, sex, and age at death. Since the bones still had tissue and skin on them, he estimated that they belonged to a body that had been dead about a year. He concluded the subject was a white male in his mid- to late-twenties. He got most of the information right.

What Bass got wrong, though, was the time of death. It turns out that the bones were actually those of Colonel Shy himself – and were 113 years old! “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” Bass told www.crimelibrary.com. “I realized that there was something here about decomposition that we didn’t know.”

In order to learn more, Bass asked the trustees of the University of Tennessee for a little land in which to conduct his research. They agreed and in 1980 the Anthropological Research Facility, or Body Farm, was born. B.D.

What Hubris!

(Commentary on The Use and Abuse of History)

What amazing hubris it is for humanity to claim that just because we have the power to destroy all other creatures including ourselves and the planet upon which we live that this makes us the most supreme accomplishment of nature. As Nietzsche was quoted in the post immediately preceding this one, proud humans say “we are at the completion of nature!”

Rubbish!

I do not doubt evolution.  I do not doubt (as Nietzsche states) that we find traces or the beginnings of ourselves in “the utter depths of the sea, in the living slime.”  That this should be used to celebrate that we are the pinnacle of all that there will ever be is not only illogical, but arrogance in the extreme.

That we have acknowledged evolution, it is logical to assume that it is an ongoing process.  What evidence is there to now conclude that it is now at an end at the least for humanity?  There is none.  We cannot assume (even if we were to believe) that we are the best or most advanced of all that will ever be.  I am no anthropologist, but didn’t Cro Magnon and Neanderthal eventually become extinct (supplanted)?  Homo Erectus in the form of what we derisively call “Cave Man” must have thought that they, too, were the ”best of the best.”

Fooled them didn’t we?

How long will it be before we too are fooled?  That is, if in our still primitive war-like animal natures, we don’t end up destroying our capacity to adapt and survive.

Now let’s leave that argument aside.  We still have the question of what is “nature?”  Science continues to question the essence of nature.  It hasn’t been that long since we discovered that perhaps Newtonian physics isn’t the end-all-be-all.  Until another paradigm is discovered we call anything that is not understood as being in nature as being in sub, super, or paranature (paranormal).  When new knowledge is discovered to rationally explain these things, then we can label them “natural.”

Just as evolution has not stopped to please the hubris of man, neither has the march of science.

Just because we cannot explain paranatural events does not mean they are not true.  (This by the way is an argument for the possible existence of God.)

Just a thought.

Just for what it’s worth . . . 

c.e.s

The historical imagination has never flown so far, even in a dream; for now the history of man is merely the continuation of that of animals and plants; the universal historian finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of the sea, in the living slime  He stands astounded in the face of the enormous way that man has run, and his gaze quivers before the mightier wonder, the modern man who can see all the way!  He stands proudly on the pyramid of the world-process; and while he lays the final stone of his knowledge, he seems to cry aloud to listening Nature: “We are at the top, we are at the top; we are at the completion of Nature!”

Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History