Death’s Cleanup Crew

This article really stinks. It’s
putrid, rotten, foul, odiferous,
and vile. If the thought of something
rotting under the hot sun makes
your stomach churn, move along,
nothing to see here. But if you’re interested
in the incredible, complex design
that goes into breaking down animal
remains, hold your nose and dig in.

Stages of Life in Death

Quick show of hands. How many of
you have spent time watching an animal
decay? Anyone? Unless you live on
a farm, the closest you’ve come is probably
a squashed squirrel or skunk. You
catch a flash of innards as you drive by
and that’s enough. Yuck!

But all vertebrates (animals with
backbones) go through a similar
process when they die. In fact, by
all appearances, God put in place a
sophisticated system to deal with dead
things. Death wasn’t part of the original
“very good” world (Genesis 1–3),
but we can be glad that after Adam’s
sin brought death into the world, the
Creator made sure dead animals get
absorbed back into the dirt. Otherwise,
they’d just pile up all over the
place. (That would sure take the fun
out of your after-dinner strolls.)

Stage 1: Keeping It Fresh

As soon
as an animal kicks the bucket, things
start to explode. Really! Take away the
breath of life, and the body’s cells can
no longer maintain homeostasis—the
perfect balance of temperature, pH,
and other important factors. Then . . . boom! They begin to rupture.

This “fresh stage” of decomposition
(yes, that’s really the name) lasts
one to two days, depending on temperature.
The air warms or cools the
body to match the outside temperature,
and gravity pulls the blood downward.
Toward the end of this stage, the
skin can start slipping off. But something
even more interesting happens
deep beneath the skin.

Living animals share their bodies
with a rowdy crew. Billions of bacteria
have set up camp in their stomachs,
throats, livers, intestines, and everywhere
else they can cram in. As long as
the animal is alive, those bacteria stay
in balance, and some even pitch in to
help the animal digest food and maintain
a healthy system. But after death,
those same bacteria that help their
hosts digest begin to digest their hosts.

First up on the decay crew are oxygen-loving
aerobic bacteria. Living animals
breathe in oxygen, and blood cells
carry it throughout their bodies. But
when the blood’s not pumping, oxygen
becomes scarce. So, those aerobic bacteria
gobble up whatever they can find.

When the oxygen runs out, the
anaerobic (live-without-oxygen) bacteria
elbow up to the feast. And these
guys don’t mess around. Within hours
they infiltrate the liver before spreading
to the heart and lungs.

Scientists who can stomach this
“fresh” process have found that the
sequence of bacteria is consistent
across all vertebrates. They’ve even
given a name to the living things regularly
involved in decay: the necrobiome.
This isn’t just a haphazard
collection of life-forms; it’s a tightly
integrated, highly sophisticated food
chain that exists only in death.

But this necrobiome doesn’t stop
with bacteria.

Stage 2: Inside Out

Anaerobic bacteria aren’t polite eaters. As they
ingest carbohydrates and fats, they
release noxious gases. The gases build
up and cause the body to bloat up to
twice its normal size (the second stage
of decomposition, which occurs two to
six days post mortem). All those bubbling
gases also cause the body’s liquids
to froth and ooze out. (Eww!)

Often, the buildup causes the skin
to rupture. The hydrogen sulfide and
methane that burst out won’t win any
awards in the perfume category, that’s
for sure. They’re what cause the corpse
to raise such a stink. But it’s not all for
naught. The ruptures allow oxygen to
return and give aerobic bacteria a second
chance. With them come tiny fungi
with fun names like Yarrowia, a type of
yeast, and Lysurus, known—aptly—as
the stinkhorn fungi because they have
a wretched aroma only a fly could love.

While all this frothing and oozing
and spore spreading may sound gross
to you, those liquids are a dinner bell
for flies and other insects. Blowflies
converge to lay eggs, and, later, the
resulting maggots gobble tissue. Tiny
worms called nematodes work up
from the soil into the body and eat the
proliferating bacteria. Interestingly,
some of the bacteria release chemicals
that specifically attract nematodes
and insects such as beetles and flies.
In turn, those creepy crawlies help
remove competing bacteria from the
scene. Some of the insects also bring
along new types of bacteria and fungi
that help with decay.

All those insects and larvae are irresistible
to small critters, such as mice
and other rodents. Those, in turn,
attract snakes and various predators,
which attract larger predators, which
attract even larger ones. Before long,
a whole food chain surrounds a single
decaying animal.

Those stinky gases are a sweet scent
to vultures circling overhead. As they
dig in, their sharp beaks speed up the
process. You could say the same for
coyotes or other toothy scavengers—and they sometimes even drag away
chunks of tissue and bones.

Stage 3: Scorched Earth

With all
that activity, we’re gushing into the
third stage of decay: purge, which can
last up to 25 days.

If you’ve ever stumbled across a
rotting carcass, you may have noticed
that the grass around it has turned
black and withered away. Would you
believe that this is actually because
there’s too much of a good thing for
the plants? During the purge, liquefied
fluids pour out that contain a great
deal of nitrogen, mostly in the form
of ammonia. Normally, plants love a
good nitrogen-rich meal, but too much
at once will cause them to die back.

Not to worry, though. Come back a
year later, and the soil where the animal
rotted will be highly fertilized
with nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous
(what you’d find in most storebought
fertilizers). Plants will grow
higher and fuller than before.

Stage 4: Advanced Decay

By this
point, the animal is losing body mass
very quickly. All those maggots, bacteria,
and scavengers have done a good
job consuming the flesh and tissue.
When there’s not much left for bacteria
to feed on, the process finally slows
down a bit and the plants begin to
grow back. In warm weather, reaching
this stage, “advanced decay,” may take
only a few days.

Stage 5: High and Dry

After a few
more days or weeks, depending on the
weather, the carcass enters the final
“dry” stage, where there’s nothing
but skin, loose cartilage, and bones—but even then, the bacteria and fungi
keep working. A whole alphabet full
of strangely named bacteria and fungi
take charge. This includes Lactobacillales,
which tolerate high acidity, and
Acinetobacter, a particularly nasty
group of bacteria that cause infections,
meningitis, and pneumonia. They can
take up to 50 days to complete their job.

Life, Death and a Cursed World

Secular biologists admit how spectacular
this tightly integrated system
of decomposition is, but they have no
good explanation for how it came to be.

That’s where God’s Word, the Bible,
gives the answers we need. Adam’s sin
didn’t catch God by surprise, and he
prepared the biological systems that
would be needed to clean up the resulting
mess. Look at it like this: The same
bacteria that return animals to the
dust are the very ones that live inside
them. Few of us love studying dead,
rotting animals. Besides the stink, the
corpse brings us face to face with an
uncomfortable truth: Everything dies . . . including us.

It wasn’t originally like this. Death
came to earth because of Adam’s disobedience
to God (Romans 5:17, 8:22).
Bloated bodies, liquefied tissues, and
nauseating gases now pollute God’s
once-perfect world. It’s enough to
make us sick to our stomachs.

We can see our Creator’s wise
design and love in something as
macabre as the necrobiome.
He provided just the right system to
break down dead animals so that
they would enrich the ground.

But even so, we can find evidence of
our Creator’s wise design and love in
something as macabre as the necrobiome.
He provided just the right system
to break down dead animals so that
they would enrich the ground—the
very ground Adam was told he would
have to sweat to cultivate after sin
(Genesis 3:19). In fact, God designed a
rich ecosystem of life that flourishes
in the middle of death. In a way, you
could say that even when we’re faced
with death, we’re reminded that death
isn’t the end of the story.

God promised to defeat the sting
and pain of death forever (Genesis 3:15;
1 Corinthians 15:55–57). And that’s just
what he did.

Jesus, our Creator and Savior, did
not see decay after he died (Acts 13:35).
He lived the perfect life that Adam
couldn’t, died in our place for our disobedience,
and then came back from
the dead. Because he’s alive, we can
now have life in him (John 5:21).

In other words, Jesus won, and one
day he will put necrobiomes out of
work for good.

https://answersingenesis.org/sin/deaths-cleanup-crew/

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