A study published in PLOS One and conducted by researchers from the University of Leuven in Belgium has isolated a mixture of eight compounds and five esters that can distinguish the "human smell of death" from that of pigs, according to Science. The findings could bring us closer to identifying the best compounds to indicate human death in order to help police units and their cadaver dogs locate dead bodies.
"So far there [hasn't been] any study based on monitoring human and pig carcasses under exactly the same conditions," said Agapios Agapiou, an analytical chemist at the University of Cyprus who was not involved in the study. "But there are still many steps before creating a synthetic substance to train cadaver dogs."
The scientists who conducted the study hope that further research will bring even more accurate results.
"The next step in our research is to see whether the same compounds are found in buried, full decomposing bodies in the field and to see whether dogs trained on the mixture respond more specific[ally] to human decomposing bodies," said Eva Cuypers, one of the authors of the study.
The study helps to narrow down the components that make up the smell of death - a previous report claimed that the smell of death contains up to 400 volatile compounds, according to the Daily Mail. Furthermore, this smell can be used to determine how long a person has been dead, according to Chemistry World.
