My question is simple. Dead things decay, but living things do not. Why? How do the bacteria know that something is alive?
My understanding is that when you’re alive, your immune system fights off bacteria. When you’re dead, there’s nothing to stop them.
I thought this too, but what about AIDS patients and others with suppressed immune systems? They get sick and die, sure, but they don’t DECAY while they’re still alive!
If they started to decay while alive, they would soon be dead anyways…
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Decay whilst the organism is still alive (although parts of it may be dead) is not unknown – we usually call it “gangrene”.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
WAG: Cells die all the time, but in the living body, they are replenished by new cells. When the body dies, there is no longer the manufacture of new cells… including the cells that fight off bacteria etc.
Living organisms have a wide array of mechanisms for fighting off little critters that would just love to feast on their juicy parts. Usually these systems work pretty well, but when they don’t infections can lead to such nasty things as gangrene (as has already been mentioned) and fungal diseases (if you really want to get grossed out some time, check out a book on tropical fungal diseases. Then lets see if you still think humans don’t get eaten why alive). Once we die, however, there is nothing left to defend us from a whole plethera of decomposers, including bacteria, fungi, insects, and various worms and microbes of different sorts. In AIDS victims, the immune system is in desperate trouble, but it is by no means non-existant. Also, the degree of sanitation has something to do it. AIDS patients are usually kept in more sterile locations than corpses (i.e. not in the ground) and therefor are less exposed to hungry critters.