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Deer Caught Gnawing on Human Bones

For the first time, researchers spotted a white-tailed deer chewing on a rib bone at a body farm

Jason Daley

Correspondent
May 8, 2017

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/deer-caught-gnawing-human-bones-first-time-180963178/


In what may be the most disturbing study published so far this year, researchers photographed the first-known instance of a white-tailed deer gnawing on human bones. As George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo, in 2015, a camera trap captured images of a deer with a human rib sticking out of its mouth, likely gnawing on the bone to release minerals.

The bone-chewing deer was detected during a study of animal scavengers at the 26-acre Forensic Anthropology Research Facility in San Marcos, Texas, a “body farm” where researchers from Texas State University study the decomposition of human bodies. Researchers usually place a cage over the bodies to prevent large animals from scavenging the corpses. But, according to the case report published in The Journal of Forensic Sciences, researchers were hoping to record how scavengers impact decomposition. So they placed the body in a wooded area in July 2014 without a cage and used cameras to record the animals that stopped by to snack.

It wasn’t until 182 days after death—when much of the body had decomposed and the dry rib cage was exposed—that the deer appeared. On January 5, 2015, the camera trap photographed a white-tailed deer with a rib bone hanging out of its mouth that has previously been described as holding the bone "like a cigar," the researchers write in the paper. Eight days later, the camera caught another image of a deer gnawing on the bones, but it's unclear whether it was the same animal.

Deer rib lateral