Something I've had to look up from class: The Body Farm

In my Biological Anthropology class, my professor briefly discussed something called The Body Farm, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Basically, it is a three-acre lot where researchers from UT-Knoxville put human bodies out to decompose in various conditions (buried in shallow grave, submerged in water, trunk of car, etc.) and track their progress. Gory.

My Dad is really into the show Bones, for unknown reasons. The show is about a forensic anthropologist, which I thought was a made-up profession until I heard about the Body Farm. Basically, all of the researchers at the Body Farm are forensic anthropologists: people who study how bodies decompose, and a lot are criminologists.

One time he said he enjoyed the interaction of the two main characters: Bones (ISTJ) and the dude who used to be Angel in Buffy (ENFP). That will only be funny to people who know my Dad. Speaking of my Dad, we were having a discussion once and he proclaimed that he would never donate his body to science. My mom and I were astonished. Why!? Well, most of the bodies at the Body Farm are donated to science. Now I see why.

"Bodies are obtained from various sources. Some have lain unclaimed at the medical examiner's office, while over 300 people have voluntarily donated their bodies to the Body Farm. Between 30 and 50 bodies are donated to the facility every year." (wikipedia, "Body Farm")