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.
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00:00When we die, our bodies begin to decompose as bacteria breaks our once-living tissue
00:04back down into the building blocks of life. However, despite disappearing in the most
00:09tangible sense, according to necrobiome specialist and microbiologist Jennifer DeBryan,
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
00:28play 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
00:43in search of food and begin eating the body they once called home. DeBryan equates this process
00:48and others that occur with several types of bacteria in the body as an evolutionary process
00:52similar to rats on a sinking ship, whereby the microbes have evolved to suddenly cannibalize
00:57the host, drastically increasing their own numbers and chances of their species survival
01:01as they prepare to jump elsewhere. What's more, despite the drastic change in environment, i.e.
01:06a warm body versus a cold ground where most people are buried, researchers have also found
01:10that these microbes live on, and the team have even found the specific DNA of an individual in
01:15the ground where they were buried long after the fact, even forming a symbiosis with ground bacteria,
01:20helping to decompose the body.