What are They and Where are They?
Body farms may sound like they’re straight out of a horror movie, and they are. Well, more like horror movies come straight out of the body farm. What a real body farm is is an Anthropological Research Facility. There are eight body farms in the United States alone, and you’ll probably never see even one of them. The first body farm of its kind was started in 1971 at the University of Tennessee. An article from Dripping Springs Century News explains how the Tennessee body farm was “the largest and only U.S. body farm for 25 years until similar facilities opened at Western Carolina University and Texas State University in the early 2000s”. In 2023, Virginia’s George Mason University welcomed the newest body farm in the U.S. as of January 8, 2026.
Why are Body Farms Important?
Dr. William Bass had estimated that the body had been dead for about a year, but it was actually over 100 years old. Raina Kelly explained in her Newsweek article how the body was preserved exceptionally well with his embalming and waterproof casket and how these kinds of dating mistakes used to be more than common before body farm research was a readily available resource.
Although the study of decomposition is a focus in these facilities, Anthropological Research Facilities also study bone structure and other biological markers to identify bodies. Crime scenes are recreated, bodies are tested once treated with a variety of chemicals and even post mortem trauma is studied. On top of these studies, this direct exposure to cadavers is used to train forensic professionals and even remains recovery animals like K9s and cadaver dogs. Not every body farm trains cadaver dogs, but the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS) does and has a “K9 Human Remains Detection” page for more information and for applications to the programs.
How Do Bodies Get to These Facilities?
Most cadavers on the body farm are donated because it was put in their will, or it was made as a choice by their loved ones. Rainia Kelly explained in her Newsweek: New York Article how “the rest are unclaimed bodies from the county morgue. Only corpses that are HIV-positive, or have hepatitis or an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, are turned away.” this is to protect students and faculty at the body farms from getting diseases from handling cadavers and keep potential scavengers like raccoons safe. Although most donations are a first choice for donors or donor families, at times they are a backup plan if bodies do not meet requirements to be studied at medical schools.
No matter the circumstances that cadavers end up at the body farms, all of them are treated with equal respect. The remains are kept safe even after they are reduced to bones. Body farms keep bone catalogues of their cadavers organized by sex, age at death, height, and weight to be studied further if needed.
Conclusion
Body farms may be considered a macabre concept to some people. But really, these facilities have gathered information that once couldn’t even be imagined in the past and helped develop technology to use in criminal investigations.The information from these facilities have been reuniting lost remains with their loved ones and finding identities of unidentified victims for over fifty years, and continue to discover new information consistently to attempt to improve the justice system for victims and United States citizens.
