On the contrary, several reports noted that the owners had very good relationships with their dogs, according to friends and neighbors. None of the case studies I saw indicated any prior history of animal abuse. (Learn more about human-dog bonding in “ Your Dog Knows Exactly What You’re Saying.”)īut dog behavior isn’t quite so clean cut. It’s tempting to think that if you’re close to your dog and have treated it well, you’re off the hook if you die. Only 10 percent of those cases involve wounds to the head. When dogs scavenged dead owners indoors, 73 percent of cases involved bites to the face, and just 15 percent had bites to the abdomen.īy contrast, canines scavenging outdoors have a well-documented pattern, opening the chest and abdomen to eat the nutrient-rich organs early on, followed by the limbs. The pattern of scavenging also didn’t match the feeding behavior of canines in the wild. What’s more, some of the dogs had access to normal food they hadn’t eaten. In 24 percent of the cases in the 2015 review, which all involved dogs, less than a day had passed before the partially eaten body was found. “It is interesting to consider the reasons for an otherwise well-behaved pet with no motivation of hunger to mutilate the dead body of its owner so quickly,” wrote the forensic examiner, Markus Rothschild. Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark Yet in the 1997 case, the German shepherd began eating parts of its owner soon after death.Ī Basset hound. In one 2007 report, a Chow and a Labrador mix survived for about a month after consuming their dead owner’s body, leaving only the top of the skull and an assortment of bone shards. In some cases, it’s clear that the animals were scavenging to survive. “If we have a situation where the owner dies and there’s no source of food, what are they going to do? They’re going to take whatever flesh is around.” “Dogs are descended from wolves,” says Stanley Coren, a psychologist who has written books and hosted television shows about dogs. Forensic testing revealed that her dog had consumed much of her face, while her two cats hadn’t touched her.Īmong the cases reported in forensic journals, most animal scavenging involves dogs, although that’s perhaps in part because forensic scientists are more surprised by the behavior when they see it. Then again, in one case reported in 2010 in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, a woman died of an aneurysm and was found the next morning on the bathroom floor. “If you’re sleeping, they tend to swat your face to wake you up.” (See more about pet personalities in “ Surprising Things You Never Knew About Your Cat.”) “It doesn’t surprise me, as a cat owner,” she says. When it happens, cats tend to go for the face, especially soft parts such as the nose and lips, says forensic anthropologist Carolyn Rando of University College London. (Also see “ Exclusive: Bone-Sniffing Dogs to Hunt for Amelia Earhart's Remains.”) It Must Have Been the CatĬats get a bad rap for being the most eager to eat their owners, and anecdotally, some emergency responders say it’s pretty common. Here are some of the most common misconceptions about post-mortem pet behavior and what the available forensic evidence reveals. Some of the patterns are surprising, and they open up fascinating questions about why pets might be motivated to eat the dead. I’ve reviewed about 20 of these published cases, along with a 2015 study that pulled together 63 cases of indoor scavenging. No one tracks the frequency of pets scavenging their expired owners’ bodies, but dozens of such case reports appear in forensic science journals over the last 20 years or so, and they’re the best window we have into a situation dreaded by pet owners: dying alone and being eaten.
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