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Articles » Entomology
How Did Forensic Entomology Begin?
Sang Mi Park
Forensic Entomology is the application of the study of insects and other arthropods to legal investigation. Arthropods are of interest to forensic entomologists because they eat dead vertebrates, including humans. Because they have set living and reproducing cycles, insects can be of use when determining time of death and if it has been moved. Sometimes the movement of victims and vehicles can also be traced by noting insects found upon them. For many years, insects found on dead bodies were considered useless and they were washed away before autopsy. The potential for entomology to assist legal investigations has been known for at least 700 years, but it has only been within the last decade that entomology has been officially defined as a field of forensic science. Entomology began in China. In 1235 A.D., a Chinese "death investigator" wrote a book called "The Washing Away of Wrongs," which was about the first medicocriminal entomology case. In a Chinese village, a murder had occurred. The investigator, after questioning everybody in the village, had all the villagers bring their knives (the murder weapon) to a certain place and lay them out. After a while, flies were attracted to one of the knives because of invisible remnants still on it. The owner of the knife confessed to the murder, and forensic entomology had been a key factor in solving this crime.
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http://library.thinkquest.org
/17049
Warner, Erica. Forensic Science. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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