When we die our bodies begin to decompose as bacteria breaks our once living tissue back down into the building blocks of life. However, despite disappearing in the most tangible sense, part of us lives on long after we’re dead. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00When we die, our bodies begin to decompose as bacteria breaks our once-living tissue back down
00:05into the building blocks of life. However, despite disappearing in the most tangible sense,
00:10according to necrobiome specialist and microbiologist Jennifer DeBrien,
00:14part of us lives on long after we're dead. According to a recent study conducted by her
00:18and her team, as the human body decomposes, the microbiome that lives on and inside of us
00:23continues long after our death. What's more, they've now discovered that those very ecosystems
00:27play a role in the breaking down and recycling of the body as well. Your gut bacteria, for instance,
00:33called Clostridia, actually leave your digestive tract and begin moving to other parts of the body.
00:38Deprived of the usual meals one provided when alive, once dead, the bacteria go elsewhere in
00:43search of food and begin eating the body they once called home. DeBrien equates this process and others
00:48that occur with several types of bacteria in the body as an evolutionary process similar to rats on
00:53a sinking ship, whereby the microbes have evolved to suddenly cannibalize the host, drastically
00:58increasing their own numbers and chances of their species' survival as they prepare to jump
01:02elsewhere. What's more, despite the drastic change in environment, i.e. a warm body versus a cold
01:07ground where most people are buried, researchers have also found that these microbes live on,
01:12and the team have even found the specific DNA of an individual in the ground where they were buried
01:16long after the fact, even forming a symbiosis with ground bacteria, helping to decompose the body.