Expert: Roger Lederer - 2/3/2009

Question
A local shop owner has had a dead bird for longer than five years, in their shop. It was aired on WCMH-NBC 4 Columbus, when the shop owner was interviewed. A viewer has asked why the bird hasn't decomposed. What happens when birds die? Do they decompose, after several years, what happens to their bodies?

Any useful information will be helpful.

Thanks,
Gina Hatfield
WCMH-NBC 4 Columbus
You Question, We Get Answers.

Answer
Let me take the general question first. When birds die, they typically decompose very quickly. They are light, have little fat, hollow bones, float on water - all which lead to rapid decomposition.In fact, except for recent road kills, one rarely finds bird bodies or skeletons, but anyone who walks in the woods will occasionally find the skeleton of a deer,raccoon, or other mammal. Birds are delicate and decompose easily; this is the reason why the fossil record of birds is not as good as it is for other vertebrates.
But any dead bodies, humans included, can exist without serious decomposition if the conditions are right. A body can be frozen or dried (under natural or unnatural circumstances) for many many years. Think of mammoths frozen in the tundra, insects in amber, or naturally mummified bodies in dry environments like deserts. I know of folks who have found mummified starlings or sparrows in their attic which died when they got trapped and were preserved by the heat and dryness. At the museum I used to curate, we in fact preserved some bird bodies by freeze-drying them. And of course, we stuffed a lot of them the old fashioned way.
I don't know about the condition of this pet shop owner's dead bird or how it got that way, so I can't give you a specific answer on that dead bird, but it is certainly not any kind of a miracle or even particularly unusual.