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When people ask what will happen to their corpses if they’re donated to a “body farm” for research, Dr. Shari Forbes provides them with as much, or as little detail, as they wish.

Certainly she tells them they would be in a natural environment, and left to decompose on the surface of the ground, in the open air, or perhaps in a shallow grave.

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She might tell them that their bodies could be placed in the trunk of a car, or wrapped in bags, a duvet, a carpet — various forms of concealment to mimic real crime scenes. Their corpses would be left for many months, perhaps years, while scientists study how the local climate of Bécancour, Que., just across the river from Trois-Rivières, impacts the five different stages of human decomposition — fresh, bloat, active decay, advanced decay and skeletonization — or how quickly their soft tissue is lost to necrophagous insects like beetles and blow flies.

Remarkably, people are already signing on.