today instead of slowing things down
we’re going to be speeding things up
yeah we’re gonna be time lapsing and
animal carcass as it rots down and if
you’re squeamish look away now so this
is going to be the bad boy that we’re
decomposing today this is a box monitor
lizard or a savannah Monitor and very
sadly died of natural causes but then he
got donated to it hopefully with the
time lapse we’ll be able to see exactly
what happens once he starts decomposing
yeah it should be really revealing for
those of you who aren’t familiar with
the time-lapse it’s a process whereby
you take many still photographs over a
long period of time so you can see
something which would conventionally
take a really long time in a short
amount of time
so we’re going to using two cameras for
this we’re gonna have one side on one
from the top pretty much good to go
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so that was the decomposition of a
monitor with it to see how it all began
we need to go back to four and a half
weeks ago they’re about five basic
stages of decomposition we’re gonna have
to sort of mimic the first these are the
decomposers we’re going to be using so
this was a chicken you can see it’s been
actually reduced to bones because we’ve
had out probably a little bit too long
so it’s absolute rocket with maggots fly
larvae or maggots are fantastic meat
eaters so we’re gonna be putting those
in first don’t form it through your mask
we call it what the initial stages so
it’s sort of between zero and three days
it’s a initial decay period so in here
there’s absolutely shed loads of fly
eggs and that’s perfect
so we’re now gonna harvest some of these
fly eggs some of these little love it
there’s loads in there when these
maggots go to work on our lizard what
sort of thing will they be doing um so
they’re one of the only starters so they
will be going for the dead mate they’re
they’re known as detritivores which is
basically sort of eating dead stuff and
even fecal matter who do you owe me oh
cool I reckon we got enough there let’s
go back to mr. lizard and leave this
stinky lot alone so I’m just about to
make a few incisions and I’ll monitor
lizards to help out those are fly eggs
going into the skin and under the skin
because that reptile skin so solid
whereabouts you’re gonna make the
incision then well I think we’re stopped
underneath and his belly we’re gonna put
them in several places or just one yeah
I think so in a few places so it’s just
about making it so we came to teach you
their first legs got him almost hours of
eggs in this one
so what’s gonna happen next we’ll
probably see it start to bloat up and
generally trigger these likes to get to
it so the fly eggs are inmates he looks
ready and the cameras are ready cool so
let’s get it going and we’ll be back in
a week to see how he’s got on
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so it’s been a couple of weeks since we
were here with the smelly chickens and
maggots and to be honest I can actually
smell the lizard already so I’m going to
honk a little bit it seriously is no in
there has changed completely doesn’t it
his nuggets done a great job just
clearing out all this of actual tissues
just a bag of skin over those bones what
would happen in the world what we’re
gonna do now is introduce some beetles
domestic beetles and also knows louder
beetles okay so time for the beetles
let’s go on they like the stage of try
decay that’s when they come in when the
maggots ship and they should really
strip any bits of sinew on those bones
away so all right it’s where we gonna be
another week or two maybe
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so it’s been about four half weeks since
we put the lizard down
well you I can scale it looks like
disgusting but awesome alright I can’t
wait to see it it’s good to go maggots
turn into pupae which then turned into
more flies which leads to more flies
it’s the circular life it’s one dead
lizard for thousands of new bones he’s
got something called beta carotene in
his skin yeah we didn’t have that and
it’s so tough you can see it’s the only
thing remaining even the beetles haven’t
got through it so yeah that’s kind of
interesting itself yeah but yeah I’d
like to see what’s under that oh that’s
a great looking skeleton so there you
have it the decomposition of a monitor
lizard taken over four and a half weeks
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