AFTER YOU DIE, A UNIVERSE EATS YOUR BODY

SCIENTISTS ARE UNRAVELING THE SECRETS OF THE NECROBIOME THE ECOSYSTEM THAT TAKES OVER OUR CORPSES AFTER DEATH.

- ERIKA ENGELHAUPT

IT’S A BRIGHT fall day in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. The air is chilly and crisp, and sunlight shines through leaves tinted in the deep reds, oranges and golds of late afternoon. And there, just to the right of a winding footpath, lies a cadaver, a nude male mottled in the purples and blues of a bruise. Lying on his back, nestled among the leaves, he looks almost as if he’s fallen asleep—but he’s actually working. His job is to decompose so that scientists can study his body’s biological undoing and answer morbid questions about how mummified tissue breaks down. These answers might one day assist in murder investigations and could possibly reveal new ways to identify John and Jane Does. Compared to some of his peers nearby, this body is new at the job. In fact, he’s just getting started.

Dozens of cadavers in various states of decay lay scattered throughout this scenic two-acre patch of southeastern woodland. This is the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, affectionately known as “the body farm,” where scientists study human decomposition. Since the body farm was established in 1987, almost 1,800 cadavers have returned to the earth here from people who donated their bodies specifically for this purpose. They’ve decayed in all kinds of situations: different seasons, clothed, unclothed, buried in shallow graves, or wrapped in plastic.

The particular scientists here today—the ones pulling a green wagon filled with lab supplies behind them—are less interested in the bodies themselves, though, than what’s growing on them. The work of these researchers occupies a small scientific niche, one that probes the activities of microbes and other decomposers that break down a human cadaver. You may have heard of the microbiome, the 100 trillion or so microbes that live on and inside us. This is the necrobiome—the organisms that thrive on our bodies once we die.