Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren
Speaker 1: voblabam here. When investigators attempt to solve a mysterious event
Speaker 1: involving sudden and unexpected death, they have to look at
Speaker 1: clues in order to piece together the events. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of questions to contend with what happened here
Speaker 1: and when? Who committed this crime? Why? And what method,
Speaker 1: weapons or tools did they use. With a vast background
Speaker 1: of science, including biology, chemistry, physics, anthropology, and math, trained
Speaker 1: specialists can look at the fragments of evidence left over
Speaker 1: from a crime and with care and precision, construct a
Speaker 1: legitimate story. They might use anything left of the crime scene,
Speaker 1: including shards of broken glass, clumps of dirt, drops of
Speaker 1: bodily fluids, and other trace elements. But one on or
Speaker 1: around a victim's body that gets a lot of attention
Speaker 1: during an investigation is actually a living organism, and it
Speaker 1: usually comes after a crime is committed. We're talking about insects.
Speaker 1: Bugs can tell us a lot about a death and
Speaker 1: reveal details about a crime. Today we're looking at the
Speaker 1: field a forensic etomology. Forensic etymology is the use of
Speaker 1: insect evidence in both criminal and civil cases, and it
Speaker 1: can help police and criminal investigators learn a great deal
Speaker 1: about what happened to a body. That's because, just as
Speaker 1: flies will flock to a piece of food left out
Speaker 1: on a table, necrophilis insects or bugs that eat dead
Speaker 1: flesh are often associated with human corpses. The major criminal
Speaker 1: field of forensic anomology is known as medico legal anomology.
Speaker 1: It's also known as forensic medical anomology or medico criminal
Speaker 1: anomology because of its focus on violent crime. People working
Speaker 1: in this field usually attempt to determine several important things,
Speaker 1: but the keys are often the post mortem interval or
Speaker 1: the estimated time of human death, and the location of
Speaker 1: the death. These scientists may be called in on legal
Speaker 1: cases involving mysterious sudden death where foul play is suspected,
Speaker 1: traffic accidents with no apparent cause of crimes where insects
Speaker 1: were introduced to a victim to cause harm, or even
Speaker 1: less messy cases of insect damage to property or infestation
Speaker 1: in food. But today we're talking about those messy cases.
Speaker 1: Bugs will arrive very quickly to the orifices of a
Speaker 1: deceased human body, such as the eyes, nose, ears and mouth.
Speaker 1: Most insects can locate the smell of dead flesh within
Speaker 1: a matter of hours after expiration as it starts to decompose,
Speaker 1: and some insects, known as carrion insects, live their entire
Speaker 1: lives feeding on dead flesh in order to fuel their
Speaker 1: life cycle and create the generation of bugs. Adult carryon
Speaker 1: insects mature and capable of flight will seek out the
Speaker 1: nearest dead body to lay their eggs inside. After all,
Speaker 1: it's got all the nutrientsa growing bug needs. There are
Speaker 1: generally three stages an insect goes through during the part
Speaker 1: of its lifetime that occurs inside of a dead body.
Speaker 1: The first stage is the egg stage, where the insects
Speaker 1: are still enclosed within their eggs. The second stage is
Speaker 1: the larva stage, where the small, wiggly wormlike larvae that
Speaker 1: have just hatched grow by feeding upon the dead flesh.
Speaker 1: And the final stage is the pupa stage, which is
Speaker 1: an intermediate stage that comes before the insect turns into
Speaker 1: a winged adult and flies away. If an enomologist collects
Speaker 1: insects from a corpse during any one of these stages, egg, larva,
Speaker 1: or pupa, and if they understand the life cycle of
Speaker 1: that type of insect, they can determine a fairly accurate
Speaker 1: time of death. In other words, the enemal just needs
Speaker 1: to understand two basic facts. How long after death the
Speaker 1: insect eggs are generally laid, plus the amount of time
Speaker 1: it takes for the insects to develop. These two facts
Speaker 1: should give them a good idea of how long a
Speaker 1: person has been dead. Many kinds of bugs may flock
Speaker 1: to a decomposing body, but the most common kinds are
Speaker 1: flies and beetles. Flies, like blowflies, can fine dead flesh
Speaker 1: within minutes. A fly larva, commonly known as maggots, do
Speaker 1: the majority of the eating and are responsible for much
Speaker 1: of a corpse's decay. Beetles, on the other hand, will
Speaker 1: typically move in once a corpse has dried out a
Speaker 1: When collecting insects, investigators try to locate the largest specimens.
Speaker 1: The oldest bugs should give the best post mortem interval
Speaker 1: to preserve the insects. Samples taken from the body are
Speaker 1: placed in containers filled with seventy percent isoprople alcohol, the
Speaker 1: same strength as the rubbing alcohol solution you can buy
Speaker 1: the store. The containers are labeled with the date and
Speaker 1: time of the collection and the part of the body
Speaker 1: from which the insects were taken. Then the investigator either
Speaker 1: delivers the specimens directly to a specialist or mails the
Speaker 1: containers expressly for examination. In a perfect situation, insects can
Speaker 1: prove an easy tool for uncovering the unknown. For instance,
Speaker 1: if a person dies of natural causes in a room
Speaker 1: where the temperature has remained constant, and the coroner wants
Speaker 1: to know the time of death, the entomologist simply looks
Speaker 1: at the bugs around the corpse and reports the details.
Speaker 1: It's almost never that easy, though. Investigators need to take
Speaker 1: into account a large number of variables when collecting specimens.
Speaker 1: The temperature of the surrounding area, for example, determines how
Speaker 1: quickly larvae will grow in corpse. Oh when a person
Speaker 1: is murdered during the summer months and left outside for
Speaker 1: several days, the ambient temperature surrounding the corpse can change dramatically.
Speaker 1: Certain types of blowflies develop faster during hot weather and
Speaker 1: slower when it's cooler. A bus found on a body
Speaker 1: that's been outside for weeks or even months showed drastic
Speaker 1: variations in insect growth cycles, and an anomologist needs to
Speaker 1: carefully observe the available specimens to determine a likely range. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: although many of the modern advancements in forensic science were
Speaker 1: made in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds, perhaps
Speaker 1: the first documented account of forensic etymology comes from the
Speaker 1: twelve hundreds, a Chinese book from that period called The
Speaker 1: Washing Away of Wrongs, where counts a murder in a
Speaker 1: small village where the victim was badly cut. The local
Speaker 1: death investigator asked around, but after several questions and few answers,
Speaker 1: he decided to have each villager bring out their sickle
Speaker 1: and lay it across the ground. Eventually, flies swarmed over
Speaker 1: one sickle, and, most likely because its owner failed to
Speaker 1: wash away microscopic bits of blood or tissue from the blade,
Speaker 1: the killer confessed and the first known case of forensic
Speaker 1: anomology was closed. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: what do bugs have to do with Forensic Science? On
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com written by John Fuller. Brain Stuff
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