捐獻的，故意放在那裏吸引鹿來吃

A fresh, donated human body was placed outdoors July 2014, and after 182 days, the camera traps set up nearby caught a deer coming for the skeletal remains. A week later, a second picture was taken of a deer (they don’t know if it’s the same animal) gnawing on a rib bone, “amusingly, as extending from the side of the mouth like a cigar,” the authors write.

The location of the body farm is “host to one of the largest populations of white-tailed deer in the country,” but researchers have never witnessed them coming for human remains, says Lauren Meckel, co-author of the paper.

It is, in fact, not an unusual behavior to see in nature. Hoofed mammals, also called ungulates, are typically herbivorous, but they also sometimes chew on bones to take in supplements like phosphorous, calcium, sodium and other minerals absent from their vegetarian diet, in a practice known in biology as osteophagy. Meckel says there has been documentation of other ungulates consuming human bones, such as camels, giraffes, and sheep.