A Visit to The Cadaver Ranch

Firstly, thanks for giving us full access to the farm and the work you do here. Tell me what drew you to this type of work?

I am fascinated with skeletons. All my life as a kid, I collected animal skeletons. I’ve always been interested in what makes each type of skeleton different. I was out searching for them and figuring out what kind of animal it came from.

You might see a femur or a thigh bone from any animal but they all look different. I wanted to know why they all look different? What is it about that that makes them different?

Now, a lot of the calls I get are to help identify whether bones are human or not – takes me seconds to know by only a few pieces of information.

How has your childhood interest translated into your study of human skeletons?

A lot of my research is on skeletal morphology and trying to understand how people’s skeletons are different and what that tells us about them. About their occupations and their activities. And, you know, when you’re looking at prehistoric remains, you want to know if you are looking at something that shows a sexual division of labor and different things of that nature. And now a lot of my research has to do with how obesity affects the body and the skeleton. 

We know a lot about differences in gait patterns of obese individuals. So we should be able to make predictions about how it should affect the skeleton because we understand how the skeleton works.

From a forensic standpoint for say a missing person, I’m actually interested in obesity because 40% of Americans are now obese, which means that if I can tell from somebody’s skeleton that the person was obese, it’s almost as good as telling them they’re male or female.

What are some of the most interesting things you’ve learned or are learning about the body?

It’s remarkable how much your skeleton can modify itself depending on what kind of stuff you’re doing. Especially when you compare prehistoric or protohistoric. I spent the first part of my career looking at archaeological sites. And so these were people right around the prehistoric period.  The things that affected the skeleton back then are very different from what affects the skeleton now.  

You might see some bad arthritis, but you’ll never see it like you do today. And the reason for that is, is that people live longer, but they also have pain medications and steroid injections and stuff like that that allow them to continue to use their skeleton beyond what would have probably been so painful for somebody else in a different time or without certain medication.

You can push your body beyond its limits and our limits are changing. Through medication and activities in your day to day. And the other thing is that we are not as active, which affects our skeleton. However, we are taller and heavier, which also affects our skeleton.

If you go back and look at childhood growth records we are considerably taller than we used to be 100 years ago.

What would that actually do to your skeleton?

If you think about having a beam that’s longer and more weight on it, it’s got to be relatively strong. And if you’re doing certain activities, it’s got to be strong in certain directions. And so you have more of a shape change. But as far as the overall size of the skeleton, it actually increases. 

It’s 100 degrees at 10:30am and we’re off to visit the bodies. Some only a little over a week out on the land. 

So tell me – who is out here? Who are the people that have donated their bodies? 

Here the typical donor is a 67 year old white male. We don’t get a huge range of age. I mean, you know, you’re never going to get kids. Which is good. We live in a society where luckily kids don’t die that often, and then when they do, their families are not likely to donate them.

Also, most of the people here, because of the research we do, are ex-law enforcement and educators. They want to help continue the education and training that goes on here. Their lives have been about seeking justice for people and families and they want that to continue. 

We do a lot of training out here. Everything from learning how to excavate, working on cadavers to fire death investigation. One of the things our body donors often like is that they know that their body will be used in many different scenarios.  First it might be part of a research project. When that’s done we’ll use their body for a training project. Then once done out on the land, their body will be processed down to a skeleton for students to study Osteology. 

Their body is used over and over and over and over again. People that donate their body want to get a sense of that. So we actually keep track of that because we have families calling and asking how their mother/father/brother/etc has been helpful.  

This is different from a typical med school donation where they might be used for a year or so and then cremated. 

What’s the reason for some of the bodies being in a cage?

This depends on whether we want vultures and other scavengers to be part of the study.  If we don’t want vultures involved in the study, then they have to be covered but still open to the elements, like this type of cage. They’re mostly skeletonized with some tough, leathery skin. So in the front are some of the newest ones which are a little over a week out on the land. So as we go back they’ve been here longer.  

Part of what we’re doing here is having the grad students actually weigh each of the bodies every day. They are put on a crane scale there. That’s one piece of data being collected daily that tells us the rate of decomposition. And then of course we take photographs and make note of everything that’s different – what’s going on with the body, different features and things. In this time of year with this heat, they are losing weight really rapidly, which means that they’re losing their internal organs and muscles.

Without a cage, then you can see how the body got scattered and by what type of animal. Also water can move it and this looks different. This gives us an idea of the spread that you would normally get. And there again, it also is a way of teaching law enforcement to recognize the bones in this type of environment. 

So it’s not just a study of the body but about how our bodies interact with the environment? 

Yes, I’ll show you some that are good examples. There’s a body right there and it’s still visible and actually easier to find because if you notice it, the vegetation is a little bit different.

Another one over here,  probably our most international one. A mass grave project. And so we have people the United States, Canada, Italy, UK and the Netherlands all working on this. It is actually replicates a mass grave that was excavated in Libya by the International Commission for Missing Persons. In this case the bodies were moved to cover it up so we did the same. And as we do that, we collect soil samples and monitor the temperature and the soil moisture. 

It’s very common in war situations where they will have a mass grave and realize that somebody figured it out. So they dig all the bodies up and move them. So we also wanted to be able to say, can we look at just like the soil and be able to say this is a secondary mass grave or this is the primary mass grave? 

You can see the vegetation is different here where the bodies are. One reason is that the soil is being disturbed and another that the plants are actually using the body as fertilizer as well. In the spring, this was all yellow flowers.

Similar to using drones in agriculture to determine where you need more fertilizer, we can use this same idea, except that we look for a spot of a certain size and set up that stands out. 

What do you think is the importance of this work, for society? 

Justice, knowledge, and understanding for the families. If someone’s body is found we can hopefully identify them and be able to tell the family what happened and give evidence in court. It might not be what they want to hear but at least they will know the truth.  Something to understand about the situation. 

Finding the truth can also protect someone from being wrongfully accused. So, it’s justice for the victims, families, and potential suspects. 

There’s also the program called Operation Identification, that runs out of this facility. This is finding people that have died crossing the Mexican/American border, identifying them and repatriating them. 

How do they identify border crossers? 

They do this a lot of different ways. One of the things that they do a lot of is wash the clothing and put the clothing up on NamUs and the families will identify and then we can go from there.

Or, anything unique about that individual gets put up on NamUs. The problem is that we can run DNA samples but if they are not in any system, which they usually aren’t, it makes it difficult to identify so it becomes about their clothing and the items they carry with them.  Even things like wrappers from  potato chips or something like that can give you an idea of the country of origin. 

People aren’t just their bodies, but all the things they carry and consume. 

Thinking back to what you said about how human bodies are changing overtime, what do you think is next on the horizon of things to know about the human body?

Anything that causes changes in the skeleton. One of the things that a lot of our students are interested in, is if you have somebody that is transgendered, can you tell that based on their skeleton.  Right now, we don’t have enough skeletons to know that. We have two individuals, but they both transitioned when they were in their 60s. So their skeleton is going to look like the sex they were born with.  But earlier interventions might change this. 

So you think that will change with something like early hormone treatment therapy?

Yeah, I mean what causes your skeleton to complete growth, for example, is estrogen release. So the reason that females are typically shorter than males is that they have about a two year earlier estrogen release than males do. Those two years make a difference in height and weight. 

One of the things that you also get with females is a unique pelvis, if you’re a female you may have a larger different shaped pelvis for childbirth, your pubic bones continue to grow a little bit. This could be genetic or functional so  in preparation for childbirth the pelvis expands during adolescence to allow for an expanding uterus.  Ultimately changing the shape of their skeleton. 

Also, as society changes its acceptance of things, like being transgendered, you can gather more contextual information that will help identify a person. For example, in the 90s a person was found wearing a dress and the assumption was they’re female but turned out they were biologically male. There’s just so much more that’s needed, contextually, not just physically to break down assumptions and find the truth.  The shame and secretiveness in the past would have hindered identification because his family wouldn’t come forward because they were embarrassed, whereas  now they might not be.

It makes me think that  if you need more of a particular body type, is there something that you might do? Saying it outloud sounds strange but putting the word out and trying to get more people to donate their bodies? 

We don’t. But you know, ideally, yeah, that would be something needed. Having  younger individuals is often a benefit. But even, you know, people that die of certain diseases. The more types of bodies are always going to help us to understand the human body. 

But that’s part of the reason we do this type of thing. You writing about us, coming to visit and talking about it with people, this is going to be the best awareness raising. 

We want people to know that we’re here to serve the public. Part of that is letting people know what happens here. Especially for the people that live in San Marcos. Don’t want them thinking it’s something sinister, or weird or whatever. We are open to the public for you to come and understand what happens here. I want it to be as transparent as possible. 

All photos curtesy of Robert Shults

-Lauren Wiginton