Insects thrive in all kinds of unpleasant environments, including, as every CSI fan knows, dead bodies.  Some academics at a university in northern Spain are working on classifying every insect species of potential use in court cases.  Their field of study is known as forensic entomology, or Crime Scene Insects.  Sounds like tons of fun.

The work of the Forensic Entomology Service in the Department of Zoology and Animal Cell Biology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) involves drawing up a census of insect species of forensic interest. These are basically necrophagous diptera, i.e. flies that live on dead tissue, cadavers. Such flies detect a dead body in a question of minutes and at times at a distance of several kilometres. They colonise the cadaver and lay their eggs there. In a matter of hours the larvae are born and the new individuals begin to develop, feeding off the cadaver until they reach full size.

There are a lot of things I’d do for science, but getting close to insects in a decomposing cadaver is not one of them.  I’m not the only one: On Popular Science’s list of the ten worst jobs in science, forensic entomologist comes in ninth.

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