![]() This kind of research helps solve mysteries such as the " floating feet" found wearing running shoes that have washed up along the West Coast in recent years. ![]() "Now we have a very good idea of how bodies break down underwater," Anderson said. But when oxygen was low, the larger animals didn't come, and the smaller animals couldn't feed. So as long as the carcass entered the water when oxygen conditions were tolerable, the larger animals would feed, opening the bodies up for smaller critters and the squat lobsters, Anderson said. But the smaller animals' mouths aren't strong enough to break the skin of the pigs. ![]() The big scavengers (Dungeness crab and shrimp) need more oxygen to smaller creatures like the squat lobsters. When the researchers dropped the first two pigs into the water, the oxygen levels were about the same, but when scientists dropped the third body in, the levels were lower. The Saanich Inlet is a low-oxygen environment, and has no oxygen during some times of the year, Anderson said. The third body likely took so much longer due to the levels of oxygen in the water, the researchers found. Shrimp, Dungeness crabs and squat lobsters all arrived and started munching on the bodies a shark even came to feed on one of the pig corpses.Scavengers ate the first two bodies down to the bones within a month, but they took months to pick the third one clean. It didn't take long for scavengers to find the pigs. At the end of the study, the scientists collected the bones for further examination. The researchers monitored what happened to the pig bodies using the live VENUS cameras, which they could control from anywhere with an Internet connection, and sensors that could measure oxygen levels, temperature, pressure, salinity and other factors.
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