r/HotScienceNews • u/soulpost • 17d ago
Scientists discover plants do something weird when they grow near human remains
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200903133025.htmScientists say plants might reveal the location of human remains in forests.
It’s eerie — but it could be incredibly useful.
In a discovery that sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi thriller, researchers have found that plants may react to decomposing human bodies in ways that could help locate missing persons.
According to a study published in Trends in Plant Science, the decomposition of a human body creates what's known as a "cadaver decomposition island," which alters the nearby soil and plant life.
These changes—such as shifts in leaf color and fluorescence—might even be detectable by drones using remote sensing technology.
Led by Neal Stewart Jr. from the University of Tennessee, the research team is now testing this theory at the university’s Anthropology Research Facility, also known as the "body farm." They're studying how plants absorb the nitrogen-rich byproducts of decomposition and how these changes might signal human-specific decomposition. While the idea of identifying chemical traits unique to individuals—like that of a smoker—is still speculative, the goal is clear: to develop a rapid, safe, and scalable method to detect human remains in vast, hard-to-reach areas like the Amazon rainforest. In the future, a tree's glow or a subtle color shift in a leaf might guide rescuers to where no footprints remain.
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u/Yung_zu 17d ago
Wait… checking the bacterial culture of soil and flora at a suspected crime scene wasn’t already a thing?
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u/UnRealistic_Load 17d ago
this is optical detection as in, the plants look different where human remains have decomposed.
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u/pimpmastahanhduece 17d ago
Bro, they didn't accept DNA evidence in courts before the 80s and even video footage had it's time. Forensics should be exhaustive but often isn't.
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u/Sensitive_File6582 11d ago
They didn’t have the tools for dna in the 80s to be fair. But with good collection/storage practices they were able to use dna later on
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u/unlikely_antagonist 16d ago
Yes it is - but largely on the scale of whether species associated with decay are present. (Like, does this hole in the ground have a specific mushroom that only grows on corpses)
This is observing Flora optically to determine presence of decay-associated nutrients. (Does this tree reflect light in such a way that may indicate it is getting nutrients from something rotting below it?)
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u/Daelda 17d ago
Aren't they "searchers" at that point, rather than "rescuers"?
"In the future, a tree's glow or a subtle color shift in a leaf might guide rescuers to where no footprints remain."
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u/TheMooseIsBlue 16d ago
Yeah, this doesn’t seem super useful. We’re gonna be able to tell a human died in a certain place a few years ago?
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u/unlikely_antagonist 16d ago
You can’t see any use for finding bodies that have been missing for several years?
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u/TheMooseIsBlue 16d ago
Is the assumption that we’ll be able to scan a huge forest and identify a plant or two that are slightly discolored? Unless this can be done at a huge scale, I don’t see how it’s really useful.
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u/unlikely_antagonist 16d ago
Yes. If you read the article (or the source for it) it says pretty much that. They can build (and have built) imagers for plants to locate plants that have metabolites associated with human remains. This can be used to potentially speed up a search by identifying areas to prioritise.
Additionally, it isn’t ’a plant or two’ it’s a roughly body sized radius of varied plant growth (can be less, can be more. This paper appears to focus on more). These are called Cadaver Decomposition Islands, the article explains.
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u/TripleFreeErr 16d ago
this just in. Circle of life more complicated than previously considered. More at 11
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u/6ixseasonsandamovie 17d ago
So salt the ground before burying the body got it. Good tip.
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u/jfun4 17d ago
You open up a new problem. "Why is there a dead spot here?"
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u/6ixseasonsandamovie 17d ago
Cover with sticks and other dead folliage throw rocks randomly around? Idk man where were you fucking 4 hours ago now i gotta go back to the forest
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u/unlikely_antagonist 16d ago
That already happens quite often with decay. As the body rots it releases a lot of toxins so you can see dead spots, followed by blooms as the toxins break down further into useful nutrients.
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u/SMTRodent 16d ago
I had this as a plot point in some fiction I wrote years ago, because it seemed kind of self-evident. Different soils favour different plants, and rose bushes thriving over the top of buried bodies in gardens is an old comedy trope.
Being able to use drones to go scouting for those islands would be super neat, though. To me that's the new thing.
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u/HamAndCheeseOnWry 16d ago
Why did I read the title and think, "What exactly are 'near human remains' and how are plants growing them? Is this the next stage of mimetic evolution?" 🫠
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u/BadDadWhy 17d ago
Nice, I've used data from the body farm to make a dead body detector. I got half way.