I think that a human body would take a bit longer because they are bigger.

It would also depend on the wounds. If the body does not have large wounds, then the insects have to go in through the orifices. That would probably take longer.

There is a place outside Knoxville, associated with UT, that is some sort of "body farm". They put bodies out and measure how long it takes for them to rot, under different conditions.

Here's the website:
http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/index.htm

I'm curious, though: What was the body laying? Eggs? Bricks? ;-)

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/deathrow/series/v-printer/story/1235416p-7342067c.html

quote:

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The research has yielded a rough formula for determining the time of death that takes environmental variables into account.

They have found that one variable dominates all others -- temperature.

Roughly speaking, bodies decompose from two forces, bacteria from the inside out, and insects from the outside in. The process speeds up as temperatures rise, and slows as temperatures fall.

Marks and his colleagues have devised a unit of measurement they call a "degree day." Twenty-four hours at 80 degrees equals one degree day. The outer layer of skin peels off at two degree days. Internal organs are liquefied at seven degree days or more. Limbs turn black at 14 degree days....Marks also called the lawyers' attention to something else about the photos and autopsy report: the maggots. There was no evidence that any had matured to the next stage of the insect life cycle, the pupa. An insect expert, he told Cooney and Pollard, could provide additional insight into Jenkins' time of death.

"The insects will tell you everything," Marks said recently. "People lie, but insects don't lie."

The life cycles of insects are unvarying. Each species progresses from egg to larva to pupa to adult at a consistent and predictable rate....Blowflies have an extraordinary sense of smell. They locate dead animals within minutes and exploit their biological niche: helping reduce a carcass to a skeleton.

Blowflies wriggle through ripped screens, chinks in houses or doors that don't close snugly in their search for food.

Once they locate a body, blowflies land and immediately lay eggs. The larvae, commonly known as maggots, hatch within a day. After six days, the maggots crawl away to a dry place and turn into pupae. Their outer skin hardens to form a protective casing -- just as a caterpillar creates a cocoon before emerging as a butterfly or moth. The full cycle from egg to adult takes 11 to 14 days -- quicker in high temperatures, slower when it's cooler.

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Just some stuff I found while Googling: decomposition "body farm".

"I was rather trying to avoid searching on the internet for the same reason - I'm more interested in setting a length of time this body has been laying ON THE GROUND than I am in seeing the splendorous details of its decomposition. I forgot to mention, there is a massive chest wound which would make a nice breeding ground for maggots. I've got flies. I just needed the time. It sounds to me that a week would be a good length of time to come up with a ripe corpse. And thanks for all the helpful info, everyone! I knew I could count on you!"

You say you have flies, do you mean those are the flies that grew from the maggots, or the flies that layed the maggots (that makes major difference in time)? For the matter of both, you must take into consideration the basic life span of a fly (egg, larva, fly, to death), and depending of the type of fly it may be. I refer you to the greatest encyclopedia that the web has yet to concieve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly

And you have to admit that every one of you are probably going to write a story with a dead body in it, and you'd want to be sure you could accurately describe the level of stink for it.

Great thread!

My character appreciates all the help. She has to report her discovery of a dead body, and I needed to know how long the person would have been missing for it to have achieved this particular stage of ripeness.

I think funerals and TV have led many people to believe that corpses really dont bloat and rot.

I researched the subject for two years and found many good sites several listed above. But it really didn't sink in untill I saw actual photos. Then it shook not only my constitution but my religious convictions. The best (or worst) depending on your perspective was rotten.com. After seeing the images there I really had to come to terms with the fact that one day my body will decompose- until that point I had some how viewed death and blood as movie effects.

In the USA we have a anti-death culture. What I mean is we show hundreds of murders and deaths on TV. But we hide the fact of death and it's processes from ourselves, acting as though it will never happen to us. We even tell our kids it will never happen to them.

JB Skaggs

DEATH'S ACRE by Dr. Bill Bass (the guy who started the "body farm") and Jon Jefferson

CORPSE by Jessica Snyder Sachs (about methods for determining the time of death)

DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES by William R. Maples and Michael C. Browning (about Maples experiences in forensics)

Another book that may be of interest, but isn't quite the same topic (it's about what can be determined from fossil hominid bones):

The commenter said I was using those terms because the corpse was a black man.

I live along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest (USA). Here the Native American tribes used to take their dead to Houses of the Dead on the islands in the middle of the river. There the dead would be laid on platforms (AIR burial). The islands eventually became filled with the bones of generations of Indians.

Many of these ancient burial grounds were flooded by the backwaters when the dams were installed on the Columbia river. One of the only burial islands left is Memaloose Island. The word "memaloose" is Chinook for "dead", and Memaloose Island is the only location where a white man was buried with the indians. In the 1800's a local politician who respected the native tribes, Victor Trevitt, asked to be buried with the indians because he said that when the Judgement Day came, he wanted to hide among them so he could sneak into heaven with the honest people. The Indian bones were removed and relocated, but Vic Trevitt's grave marker is still visible.