A deer munching on a human carcass for the first time ever

To Solve the crime cases or identifying dead bodies Forensic scientists do lots of weird things. Corpses are left out for better understanding what happen during and after decomposition.

In July 2014, researchers left a body in a wooded part of FARF. They wanted to learn about how different scavengers leave their marks on human remains, so they set up a motion-sensitive camera to see who would stop by. It is commonly reported foxes, turkey vultures, racoons, coyotes, and other carrion-gobblers picking at a corpse, but after a few month, a shock happening came forward.

A glimpse of a young white-tailed deer standing near the skeleton caught with a human rib bone in its mouth on January 5, 2015. Again the same happening on January 13 caught a deer with another rib sticking out of its mouth like a cigar. Solved solution remain behind that whether it was the same deer in both cases or some

 

Meckel et al., J Forensic Sci 2017

This is the first known evidence of a deer scavenging human bones, and the authors published their findings in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Another deer (or possibly the same one) visited the carcass a few weeks later. Meckel et al., J Forensic Sci 2017

The paper describes the signs of deer dining, in case it helps other forensic scientists in investigating suspicious deaths. Based on this case study and the way deer have been known to forage animal carcasses, the authors note that the ungulates tend to seek out dry bones of long-dead animals, and in particular bones with a rectangular cross-section. They cause the most damage on the ends of the bone, where the zigzag motions of their jaws leave behind a “stripped, forked pattern in the bone,” the authors note. Carnivores, by contrast, seek out fresher remains and leave punctures and pits in the bone.

It is not, however, the first time we’ve seen deer violating their vegetarian diets. In fact, they’re known to have a taste for blood. Previously they’ve been spotted eating fish, bats, and dead rabbits. Scientists think deer and other herbivores may occasionally seek out flesh to get minerals—such as phosphorus, salt, and calcium—that may be missing from their regular diets, especially in wintertime.

 

DOI: 10.1111/1556-4029.13514

 

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