The woman in this photo passed away, and an animal in the household started to eat her face postmortem, no further info. Postmortem animal interference of human corpses or remains is a well known phenomenon to forensic death investigators, the morphological appearance of these injuries can be misinterpreted by police officers investigating the suspected crime scene or by the consulted medical practitioner.
Frequently the face, hands, and legs are destroyed by postmortem animal interference as they are unclothed and thus easily accessible. However, there are cases where such lesions have been noted in other areas of the body which have been covered by the cloths including genitals but they are rare.
Fig.1 Woman’s face eaten postmortem by an animal.
In cases with postmortem animal predation, the psychological state of the animal is a possible reason for its behavior. One possible explanation for such behavior is that a pet will try to help an unconscious owner first by licking or nudging, but when this fails to produce any results the behavior of the animal can become more frantic and in a state of panic can lead to biting. The motive is not to attack the owner but is a kind of ‘‘displacement’’ behavior motivated by confusion and fear. The fact that the efforts of the animal will obviously be fruitless explains why this can easily escalate and culminate in excessive mutilation.
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