Forensic scientists have long used dead pigs and other animals as stand-ins for humans to better understand how the body decomposes after death. Their research on decomposing animals has informed the ...

Researchers in Mexico are employing an unusual method to locate the thousands of individuals who have vanished amidst decades of drug cartel violence: pigs. These animals serve as proxies for human ...

Before the team started working on this study in 2013, Hale tells Inverse, law enforcement officials had approached Ross’s lab to assist in examining the remains of children and babies whose bodies ...

Footage shot by Jerry Payne for the first detailed study of arthropod succesion in animal decomposition and the first to use a pig as the model. Because a pig closely approximates the human body, the ...

Because pigs have remarkably similar anatomy to humans, knowing the signs of decomposition in the animals can help identify hidden graves of humans. Victims of cartel violence in Jalisco, Mexico, ...

Footage shot by Jerry Payne for the first detailed study of arthropod succesion in animal decomposition and the first to use a pig as the model.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Because pigs have remarkably similar anatomy to humans, knowing the signs of decomposition in the animals can help identify hidden graves of humans.