by Jan Thornhill
I visited a school a few days ago to talk about my books
and, as usual, passed around the contents of my “museum-in-a-bag,” a collection
of, among other things, skulls, dinosaur bones, desiccated insects, snake
skins, feathers, and a mummified bat and two hummingbirds. The children are
always very careful with my treasures, but that day my white-tailed deer skull
finally snapped in half. I wasn’t exactly surprised, since this particular skull has
been handled by at least 5,000 kids over the past few years. Besides, I can always
glue it back together again. I’d like to save it, though, because, like many of
the things in my bag, the deer skull has a story.
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| White-tailed deer skeleton (Jan Thornhill) |
I found it, along with most of the rest of the deer’s skeleton
behind a fence on my road. It’s not hard to imagine how the animal died: I’m
sure someone struck it by accident with their car. Though mortally injured, it
must have managed to make two great bounds, one to get off the road and the
other to get over the fence. The person who hit it must have been relieved to see it disappear into the brush as he or she drove away. But then, alone, the deer collapsed and died.
A year earlier, I had looked for puffballs in exactly the
same spot in late autumn. There were no deer remains then, so the longest it could
have been hidden there was twelve months. Amazingly, other than a
few wisps of hair and a couple of snippets of dried skin, the skeleton was completely
clean – clean enough that I had no qualms about bringing it home.
So who do I have to thank for cleaning those bones for me?
Scavengers and decomposers, that’s who – my favorite characters in the food
chain.
I was quite sure a coyote must have visited the corpse of
the deer shortly after it died since the bones of two of its legs were missing.
The coyote is the only animal in my neighborhood that is strong enough to drag
away such large parts. Though they’re predators, and often hunt for food,
coyotes are also such frequent scavengers that they’ve developed a special
receptor in their brains that makes them immediately throw up anything that is
dangerously rotten. So a coyote wouldn’t have had to feed on the carcass
immediately, especially if the deer had died in the cold of winter.
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| Coyote feeding on elk carcass (Courtesy Bryan Harry, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) |
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| Turkey vulture |
Other scavenging mammals, such as foxes and skunks, might
also have visited the corpse, as well as birds, such as crows and vultures. Our
local turkey vulture is one of the few large animals that is a dedicated
scavenger, which means that its only food is carrion, or already dead or
decaying flesh. They’re perfect for this job: they have an extremely well-developed sense
of smell that allows them to home in on food that's miles away; their bald heads reduce the amount of rotting matter that might stick
to them; strong acids in their digestive tracts destroy harmful bacteria; and their
urine is also very acidic – and here’s the best part – so they pee down their legs
to let the acid destroy nasty bacteria clinging to them.
As well as being fed upon by these larger animals, in the warmer months corpses
attract an amazing number of insects. A variety of flies are lured by the smell
of death and lay their eggs. Their larvae, or maggots, are voracious carrion
feeders. Flesh-eating beetle larvae continue the job and, later, other beetles
with specialized mouth parts show up to feast on tough skin and ligaments,
followed by moths that eat fur and hair. These insects all arrive at such
specific stages of decomposition that forensic entomologists, scientists who
study the insects that are found on or near dead things, can use their
knowledge of this progression to determine the time of death when the remains
of a human are found.
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| Close-up of a blowfly maggot (Eye of Science) |
Throughout this whole process bacteria are active, gobbling
up the corpse from within. These bacteria produce gases as a waste product, and
it’s these gases that are responsible for the putrid odors that waft off rotting
animals. Humans are naturally revolted by these smells, which is a good thing.
If we weren’t disgusted by the smell of decomposition, we might be tempted to
eat food that has gone bad and get sick from the bacteria growing on it.
Interestingly, almost everyone in the world says the same thing when confronted
by these smells, some version of “Yuck!” or “Ick!” This verbal gagging is so natural and so
universal that some people think it might be the way that human language began.
My tip to anyone who finds an animal skull (or other bones)
and wants to bring it home, is to use your eyes and nose. If it looks gross and
smells disgusting, leave it where it is. Mark the location and return in a few
months. More often than not, scavengers and decomposers will have completely
cleaned it up for you.
You can find out lots more about death and decomposition in
my book: I Found a Dead Bird: The Kids’
Guide to the Cycle of Life & Death (Maple Tree Press)
