The shift nobody watches
Who Clears Away Dead Animals?
A dead animal in a forest disappears within days, and almost nothing sees it happen.
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Step 1 of 5
A body is a pile of good food.
Everything in a living animal — meat, fat, bone — is worth eating. Leaving it untouched would waste a large amount of the energy in a whole ecosystem.
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Step 2 of 5
The big scavengers come first.
Vultures, foxes and crows find a carcass within hours, mostly by watching each other. They take the easiest meat, and in doing so open it up for everything smaller.
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Step 3 of 5
Then the insects work through it.
Beetles and fly larvae arrive in a predictable order, each species turning up at a particular stage. The order is reliable enough to be used as a clock.
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Step 4 of 5
Microbes finish everything.
What no animal takes is broken down by bacteria and fungi into simple substances that soak into the soil. Nothing is left that a plant cannot use.
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Step 5 of 5
Skipping the queue causes real problems.
Where vultures have disappeared, carcasses sit for far longer, feral dogs multiply on them and disease rises. The clearing-up is not optional.
Forensic scientists use the insect order to estimate how long something has been dead, sometimes to within a day.
The short version
Scavengers, insects and microbes take a dead animal apart in a reliable order, returning everything in it to the soil.
Try it yourself
Leave a fallen apple in a corner of the garden and look at it each day. The same queue forms, more slowly.