Corpses

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Among body feeding or postmortem animal food is any change occurring after the death of a body caused by bites and feeding traces of vertebrates is conditional. The presence of animal damage can lead to the erroneous suspicion of an unnatural cause of death or a homicidal offense . Colonization of the corpse with insects and worms and the resulting changes in the corpse are not considered corpse devouring in the narrower sense.

Corpses found in the open air are often eaten by corpses. Carnivorous animals and especially scavengers and omnivores come into question. In Central Europe these are especially foxes , badgers and wild boars , but birds also cause corpses, especially gulls and corvids (crows and ravens) , especially on soft, easily accessible body parts . Typical feeding marks on protruding body parts (ears, fingers, toes, nose, lips, etc.) are caused by rodents such as mice and rats . Water corpses can be affected by fish (especially sharks ). If corpses are eaten up intensely and / or corpses have been lying for a long time, the dragging of body parts or individual bones to different locations is a forensic problem, as this significantly changes the location of the corpse and the original crime scene cannot always be reliably determined.

In the case of deaths in which the corpse is trapped together with domestic animals , it is not uncommon for corpses to be eaten. Domestic dogs and cats are predominantly used for this , but hamsters and domesticated songbirds are also rarely used . The motivation of the animal does not seem to be explainable in every case with hunger and the urge to eat, rather the exceptional situation of the pet (especially with domestic dogs) seems to lead to attempts to wake up or jump over actions in the form of biting. These forms are particularly present when the corpse is eaten immediately after death and after the animal has previously consumed normal food. This is made easier with little clothing or covering of the corpse, although cases of post-mortem castration have also been described. A special form is the agonal bite injury , in which unconscious or already in agony people are affected by animal damage and therefore the injuries to the corpse were caused ante mortem (intra vitam) .

The deliberately induced post-mortem animal feed is a special type of burial in some cultures . In Zoroastrians and Parsis the corpse eaten by vultures in special buildings ( "Towers of Silence"), the is Dachmas usual.

Canidenverbiss is also in Neolithic burials in megalithic tombs detected, but here it is unclear whether this was done by penetrating into the grave animals or fleshing part was the burial ritual. Browsing by rodents affects already fleshed bones and can usually hardly be classified in terms of time.

literature

  • B. Brinkmann, B. Madea: Handbook forensic medicine . 2003, ISBN 3-540-00259-6 , pp. 187-190.
  • WD Haglund 1997. Dogs and coyotes: postmortem involvement with human remains. In: WD Haglund, MH Sorg (Ed.), Forensic Taphonomy: the postmortem fate of human remains . Boca Raton, CRC Press, 367-381.
  • V. Schneider: The inquest. Stuttgart, New York 1987 ISBN 3-437-11114-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L. Plötsch-Schneider, L. Endris: Postmortem dog bite marks and corpse damage . Kriminalistik (1984) 38: pp. 351-353
  2. ↑ D. Ropohl et al .: Postmortem injuries inflicted by domestic golden hamster: morphological aspects and evidence by DNA typing . Forensic Sci. Int. (1995) 72 (2): pp. 81-90 PMID 7750871
  3. ^ A. Dettling: Animal bites caused by a song bird? . Archive Kriminol. (2001) 208 (1-2): pp. 48-53 PMID 11591059
  4. ^ MA Rothschild, V. Schneider: On the temporal onset of postmortem animal scavenging. "Motivation" of the animal. Forensic Sci. Int. (1997) 89 (1-2): pp. 57-64 PMID 9306664
  5. ^ N. Romain et al .: Post-mortem castration by a dog: a case report . Med Sci Law. (2002) 42 (3): pp. 269-271 PMID 12201075
  6. ↑ z. B. Alasdair Whittle, Michael Wysocki, Parc le Breos Cwm Transepted Long Cairn, Gower, West Glamorgan: Date, Contents, and Context. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 1998, 177
  7. ↑ Michael Wysocki, Seren Griffiths, Robert Hedges, Alex Bayliss, Tom Higham , Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo, Alasdair Whittle: Dates, Diet, and Dismemberment: Evidence from the Coldrum Megalithic Monument, Kent. In: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 79, 2013, p. 61, doi : 10.1017 / ppr.2013.10 .