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Your pet would probably eat your corpse, and the issue is interfering with crime scenes
Its just a fact of life that pets eat the dead bodies of their owners, but what happens when hungry animals interfere with crime scenes?
Tales of animal owners passing away, only to have their pets eat chunks of their dead body before the police can arrive are far more common than you might think. But what happens when a pets insatiable appetite accidentally covers up signs of murder? Well, a new study aims to help police figure out if cats and dogs have disturbed crime scenes and some of the cases are ghastly.
Cases of pets eating their dead owners are genuine horror stories
Whilst there arent any organizations that actively track cases of pets eating their owners deceased bodies, dozens of cases have been reported in the past 25 years and some are truly horrific.
In fact, forensic pathologist at the University of Adelaide Roger Byard says, Id suspect its much more common than these very few case reports would suggest.
In 2021, Byard wrote a case report about the police entering the home of a 69-year-old man in Australia who they had suspected to have died several days before they arrived. Whilst the officers likely expected a rather gruesome scene, they were met with approximately 30 cats inside.
Not only had the mans face been eaten down to the bone, but his heart and lungs were gone and one not-so-friendly feline was still sitting inside the mans empty chest cavity.
In 1997, police were taking a German Shephard to an animal sanctuary after its owner had reportedly committed suicide, only for the dog to vomit up parts of his skin (including tissue with beard hair still attached) in the back of the cruiser.
In 2007, a Chow and a Labrador mix were able to survive for about a month by themselves from eating their owners dead body; only leaving his skill and a few bone shards behind.
There was even a case in 1995 of a pet hamster (yes, HAMSTER) that reportedly made a nest from pieces of its dead owners facial tissue!
The reason why some pets eat the corpses of their dead owners? It likely comes down to scavenging behavior and hunger our pets are domesticated from wild animals after all, so a free meal is still a free meal.
As psychologist Stanley Coren explained, If we have a situation where the owner dies and theres no source of food, what are they going to do? Theyre going to take whatever flesh is around.
Carolyn Rando, a forensic anthropologist at University College London, said of the Australian incident, I think we have to come to the conclusion that our pets will eat us and our dead bodies, adding, Its just a fact of life.
New study aims to help police when pets disturb crime scenes
Whilst stories of our pets eating corpses are horrifically disturbing what happens when a hungry dog or cat accidentally covers up signs of a crime?
Researchers from the University of Bern, Switzerland, recently published a new study in the Journal of Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology. In that study, they cited a case of an elderly woman in Chile who had supposedly died of natural causes in her home, after which her pet dog had eaten part of her face.
However, it wasnt until a coroner performed a CT scan that they found out that the woman had actually been murdered during a home robbery gone wrong, being bludgeoned in the face, which the dogs bites had incidentally hidden from detectives.
To aid police authorities around the world, the researchers put together a helpful flow chart that will help investigators determine whether or not a crime scene had been disturbed by an animal.
One can have fabulous tools, recognized and trained coroners, or anthropologists, but if one does not have [trained] first responders, the possibility of losing evidence can be critical.
This chart includes examining whether there is access to a body for animals, evidence that an animal had been present, how to document animal evidence, and how animal scavenging can impact ongoing investigations.
Rando shared how if you too are worried about your pet eating you, its a good idea to have someone regularly checking on you since The commonality [in these cases] is that the person had been alone for a very long time.
In what could be classed as gallows humor, Byard hilariously shared that If it kept my old golden retriever going after I died, Id be quite happy for it to have a feed.
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The original research paper was published in the open-access Journal of Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology on December 16.
