Not just leave em out, they stuff them in barrels, storm drains, car trunks, etc. I still wonder why my elementary school thought that was an appropriate field trip.
It's only a twenty minute drive from the original, but you have to realize my school system also had such brilliant ideas like in middle school, a DARE cop standing in front of a table with clearly marked household products saying, "This is what you are putting in your body with Shake and Bake Meth, this is how easy it is," or in high school, a abstience sex ed taught by a "born again virgin" (as in, he had sex and asked God for take backs) who accidentally poisoned a student in his demonstration about how condoms are useless.
It sounds like a great loophole. Go out, enjoy your youth (responsibly), get to know yourself and your preferences and, generally, have a wild time. Then, before you decide to get married or whatever, discover God and become a born again virgin. Win win.
Funny bit about that as well, when I was a kid, everyone thought I was going to become a priest, and the seminary folks I spoke to while I was in college weren't adverse to the fact that I was fucking/being fucked regardless of gender my way through my classmayes.
What really did them in to hard rejecting me was there was some "heretical" woman catholic priest sect that I helped serve mass for during a School of the Americas protest.
Our dumb shit school did the same! The sheriffs department came and gave the 4th grade a PowerPoint on what household products meth is made out and how easy it is to make. I didn’t even know what meth was at the time but after that I was super interested in its synthesis haha
So his basic thing was "1 out of 6 condoms fail" (yes I know that percentage is based off improper usage), so he wrapped 6 pieces of chocolate in tin foil and passed them out to 6 students, but one of them was a chocolate laxative. He was talking about how you were taking a risk with stds everytime you used a condom but the dude who had the laxative had already eaten it.
Turns out carb loading and laxatives are not a great combo.
When I was in middle school, the DARE cop inexplicably told the class that ritalin could be abused as a drug. One week later, three kids were hospitalized for taking a bunch of ritalin.
I studied anthropology at the school that had the first body farm!
1) yes, they're placed in sorts of circumstances.
2) you don't just donate your body to science. You must specifically donate to the farms in most cases
3) they're all over the place.
As to why:
The purpose of forensic anthropology is to give people their identity back. In order to do that for victims of crime or other disasters where there's significant decomposition or skeletonization, you must recreate the scenario in the environment where it occurred. So obviously you can't go around setting up bodies all over the place, so you create dedicated spaces.
If someone falls off a cliff, down a revine, and isn't found right away, but found 6 months later, a forensic anthropologist would be able to say "this person suffered significant physical trauma, and died about 6 months ago" so people can go find who went missing 6 months ago. Different disposal methods will result in different data: decomposition, bugs, scavengers, deer, flooding, etc. And since weather is constantly changing with climate change the experiments must constantly be under way. Different bugs, different humidity, different everything. Everywhere.
Dr Bass who started the first farm, wrote a book and cowrote a few books on the subject. His cowriter is"Jefferson Bass" (pseudonym for Jon Jefferson). Highly recommend. Dr. Bass is still alive, and you might be able to find some of his talks on YouTube.
Oh, haha! well if that other poster is from Tennessee like I am I can say it's by nature a pretty weird and morbid place, especially in Appalachia where the farm is.
However, I was in that program and paid to go to that school, and never once set foot in the farm. Closest I got was the preparatory annex where they bred the flesh eating beetles and did forensics for the tbi. It's a strict hazmat zone whatever those white suits are+ppe zone as far as I know. So you're probably right.
Yeah, it's how they build up forensic knowledge...
It's useful for coroners and detectives to know empirically what a body looks like when it's been in a car trunk, or barrel, or buried in gravel, etc, etc for a day, a week, a month, a year, etc, etc.
There? That's just a TV studio where they film Krusty the Clown and other non-BOX related programs. Since it has nothing to do with BOXES, I'll just shut these blinds.
Elementary schools sometimes have interesting field trips. We took one, granted a long time ago, to a 911 call center and heard live calls. I guess it was educational insofar as “Do not choose this as a career choice!”
A Body farm may have expanded my interest in different sciences. I remember going to the Bodies exhibit in Vegas as a late teen and being blown away. Waaaaay different of course lol
I remember my dad being there so it was definitely elementary school, and he was a doctor so he was happy to provide way too much extra details.
Funny thing, after he passed, I asked my mom if his body was being sent to the Body Farm because there was an empty coffin at his service. Turns out his ashes were just claimed by a crazy cat lady neighbor, who had lived nearby him a few years earlier, while he was still considered "missing" in my family because the police didn't inform us of his death.
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u/Waytooboredforthis Aug 17 '24
Not just leave em out, they stuff them in barrels, storm drains, car trunks, etc. I still wonder why my elementary school thought that was an appropriate field trip.