Dead Bodies Continue to Move for Over a Year

Forensic investigators in Australia ran a grisly experiment for more than a year and came up with some fairly weird conclusions. They observed (and photographed) a corpse as it decomposed at a body farm for 17 months. A picture was taken every half-hour during daylight for that entire time. They discovered that a dead body can move for a long time after death- more than a year.

"What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body," Alyson Wilson a medical scientist at Central Queensland University told the ABC.

Some movement after death is expected, but the fact that it continued for such a long time was a complete surprise, Wilson said.

The results of the study could have implications for forensic investigations. We can no longer assume that the position in which a long-dead body is found is the same position the deceased was in at death. Read the story at Interesting Engineering. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Flickr user projectexploration)


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