What Pig Carcasses Could Teach Coroners About Human Death  A dead pig is a good proxy for a dead person: It's roughly the size of a human torso it has no fur and its gut holds similar bacteria. These parallels mean that injury and decay are comparable in the two species which can help forensic pathologists learn more about how corpses behave. On land this dark research is easy place the pig somewhere and watch it rot. But what about bodies at sea? When a corpse turns up in a marine environment whether as a result of murder accident or tsunami coroners and pathologists don't have the information they need to determine even the time of death. In 2000 forensics researcher Gail Anderson of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia was the first to simulate a marine grave; she sent divers to place pig carcasses underwater and chronicled the decay that followed as crabs shrimp and sea lice devoured them. Then in 2006 Anderson began conducting research with Venus a cabled ocean observatory that broadcasts underwater views of offshore British Columbia live over the Internet. The researchers used a remotely operated vehicle to plunk a pig in view of a camera which recorded the action as sea life destroyed it. Twenty-two pigs later and with more scheduled for this fall Anderson's team is learning how to tell whether a body decayed on a sandy or rocky surface whether it came from fresh- or saltwater and whether its wounds are from a knife or a crab.The work is already paying off. After several human feet clad in athletic shoes started washing up on Vancouver's shores in 2007 Anderson quashed speculation that a serial killer was lopping them off. The cause of death still isn't clear but we now know that sea life snipped away enough tissue that the feet fell off on their own.A two-ton node basically a large waterproof Ethernet hub connects the experimental setup to a 1.5-inch cable which provides power and transmits video photos and data over the Internet for scientists and the public to check out.Two pigs are tethered to an instrument platform to keep sea critters from dragging them out of camera range. One sits in the most natural setting possible while a backup is encased in a cage a feature added after an experiment was largely ruined by hungry six-gilled sharks. The deep-sea vehicle Ropos (remotely operated platform for ocean sciences) delivers the pigs and their instrument platform to a node and plugs in a webcam and sensors with dexterous arms. When the experiment ends Ropos swims back unplugs everything and brings the remains and the platform back to its mothership.The experiments run hundreds of feet underwater where it is pitch black. In order to capture the pigs' decomposition on video four lights flash on for a few minutes every quarter hour (constant light would scare away too many animals changing how the pigs decay). The high-definition camera can be panned or tilted remotely.A set of sensors measures the water's temperature salinity and oxygen concentration all of which could impact how the pigs decompose.The platform's bottom is plastic mesh which lets silt microbes eat away at the pigs while collecting the bones for later study (by Lynne Bell a forensics anthropologist at Simon Fraser University).Sea lice mob devours pig from the inside out  Sandrine Ceurstemont editor New Scientist TVThis article originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of Popular Science. See the rest of the magazine here.I think Texas A&M has been burying pigs for a few years or more. They have shown that many of the conclusions forensic's has taught may be wrong or at least wrong enough to look at new data.