[Image: Pexels]
Carte Blanche’s 30 March episode dives into something straight out of a mystery thriller – except it’s real and happening on the slopes of Table Mountain.
Picture forensic scientists, cutting-edge research, and a bunch of dead pigs wearing jeans. You read that right.
Welcome to the bizarre but crucial world of forensic taphonomy, where researchers are studying how bodies decompose in the wild. That’s because fine-tuning the science of estimating time-since-death could mean the difference between solving a murder and a case going cold.
Obviously, using actual human corpses is a legal and ethical nightmare in South Africa, so pigs are the next best thing – they’re roughly the same weight and anatomy as humans, making them ideal stand-ins for the dearly departed.
Pigs help forensics (in a way) thanks to a groundbreaking taxonomy study led by a multi-disciplinary team based at UCT. More on #CarteBlanche @carteblanchetv tonight, in a story produced by Annalise Lubbe and edited by @stenett3. Tune in! https://t.co/FJhx78O3WO
— Erin Bates (@ermbates) March 30, 2025
About these pigs being fashion-forward, a seamstress was brought in to alter denim jeans and jerseys for them, which is odd not only because they’re for pigs but because they’re for dead pigs. Don’t worry, there was a method to this madness.
Clothing plays a role in how a body decomposes, and forensic cases often involve clothed victims. So, for accuracy’s sake, six pigs were suited up and left to break down in two Cape Town locations: a research facility in Delft and a secure area in Rosebank.
Per The Conversation, results showed that winter clothing slowed decomposition and summer clothing sped it up. Cape grey mongooses (yes, mongooses!) were major accelerators, scavenging and munching away and messing with the decomposition timeline.
Erin Bates posted on X: “What we’re doing in the field helps us directly in case discovery,” says Gibbon. Research by colleague Finaughty found the Cape mongoose is, in fact, a significant scavenger which can disperse digits (fingers) of deceased persons at certain sites.
This experiment, part of Dr. Kara Adams’s PhD research, builds on data collected since 2014. The team was actually the first to prove that mongooses scavenge from bodies- so if you ever suspected these little guys had a dark side, you were right.
In a country where violent crime leads to the discovery of thousands of dumped bodies per year, never identified, developing better techniques to identify time of death is very important.
For Prof. Victoria Gibbon, researching decomposition of pig carcasses is about more than mere science. It’s about helping forensic scientists bring closure to the countless loved ones seeking answers. #CarteBlanche @ermbates pic.twitter.com/uoEFJdrMqo
— Carte Blanche (@carteblanchetv) March 30, 2025
Interestingly, single bodies decomposed faster than those dumped in pairs or groups. All of this feeds into understanding how soft tissue dries out and mummified – critical knowledge for forensic investigations.
Mummification in Cape Town isn’t quite the ancient Egyptian kind, but it’s still fascinating. The city’s dry summer winds can desiccate a body in under 30 days, a rare phenomenon known as precocious mummification. First documented in Cape Town in 2019, this study aimed to break it down further because courts prefer hard numbers over guesswork.
To up the science game, electrical engineer Justin Pead from UCT developed custom sensors to monitor how moisture leaves a body over time. Placed in the head, neck, and lower body of the pig carcasses, these sensors collected data across two summers and one winter. In summer, bodies dried out rapidly, reaching mummification in under a month. In winter, they decomposed but never fully dried out, thanks to Cape Town’s cold, wet weather.
This study is a global first, pushing forensic science forward with new tech and hard data. From forensic anthropologists to electrical engineers, experts are now working together to revolutionise how time-since-death is estimated. More objective data in court cases? That’s a game-changer. And if it means a few pigs had to rock some custom denim for the cause, so be it.
[Source: The Conversation & Carte Blanche]
