Come on now. This thread is not about garden-variety nosebleeds from being bonked in the face playing sports. It is about dead or dying animals who bled copiously from their orifices before, during, or after dying, without an obvious injury to their nose or mouth.
No, it isn’t.
This thread is about (and I quote) “mice and rats that… often have blood on the snout area or bleed from the mouth and nose when thawed” and “animal carcasses [that] often have blood coming out of the nose.”
Blood on the snout area, bleeding from the mouth upon thawing and blood coming from the nose can all be explained perfectly well by a nosebleed.
I’m not sure where you’re getting this “bleeding copiously” idea from. Some of the examples given in this thread mention copious bleeding, the vast majority do not. The majority describe blood around the muzzle or coming form the nose that could be perfectly attributed to a nosebleed.
Here’s the deal with post-mortem bleeding in trauma situations.
First I’ll need to explain a little bit about the body. (Animals work similarly.) Blood, obviously, is very important to our body. It carries nutrients to, and toxins away from, every cell in the body. It also has clotting factors in it to patch any “leaks” that may occur. Our blood exchanges these nutrients and toxins in capilaries, the smallest vessels in our body. They’re actually smaller than the diameter of a red blood cell – the cell has to “squish into” the capilary to go through. This maximizes contact between the blood cell and capilary wall to pass substances through. Anyways, this system is in a very carefully maintaned balance. Proper blood pressure ensures proper nutrient / toxin transfer, and the body has all sorts of clever ways to maintain blood pressure. The heart can adjust how strongly and how quickly it beats. Arteries are muscular, they can constrict and dialate to maintain pressure. (Think of a garden hose, if you stick your thumb over the end of it, the pressure of the water goes up.) There are tiny valves located throughout the body as well, to direct blood away from non-essential parts. Anyways, there’s a limit to what the body can maintain. Let’s say you shoot a deer, and it loses a significant amount of blood volume. Blood pressure drops, and perfusion (the name for the exchance of oxygen, nutrients and toxins) fails. Cells will die if something isn’t done. At this point the body goes into shock. Shock progresses through a few stages –
Compensated Shock.
At this point, the body is able to maintain blood pressure and perfusion on it’s own. Chemicals are released to constrict the arteries and tell the heart to pump harder and faster. Those tiny valves I was talking about before – precapillary and postcapillary sphincters, shut. This prevents blood going into and out of the capillaries, directing bloodflow to the more important internal organs. The body will start to pull fluids out of cells and dump them into the blood supply in an attempt to increase blood volume and blood pressure. People going into shock will often complain of thurst at this stage.
Decompensated shock.
This is where things start to go wrong, and the body’s safety mechanisms start to fail or cause problems of their own. The blood that’s in the capillaries, between the two valves that were shut, is stagnant, and so it starts to clot. This happens in a lot of places. In addition, the cells that the capillaries once fed, are now deprived of oxygen from the lungs. This causes the cells to create energy in another way, without oxygen. Unfortunately this isn’t very efficient and doesn’t last long, and has the bad effect of producing lots of acid, natural byproducts of cellular metabolism that would normally be disposed of by the normal flow of blood. This acidity, and lack of oxygen to, damages the cells, and blood vessels. Blood starts leaking internally. The pre- and post-capillary sphincters fail, allowing thick, clotted blood back into the circulation. This makes all of the blood thicker than it should be, allowing for clots to form everywhere in the blood supply. The thicker blood puts a greater strain on the heart, and greatly hinders perfusion throughout the body. All of the body’s clotting agents are used up, meaning the body can no longer stop itself from bleeding. Acid levels are building up all over the body as the garbage is no longer removed properly. Damages to cells and blood vessels are happening all over. People in this stage will start to bleed from unusual places – eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingertips, toetips, etc., as the tiny vessels are damaged and unable to clot.
Irreversible Shock
At this point, all the abovementioned damage has now damaged the internal organs to the point that the entire body is failing and there’s nothing one can do.
Now anyways, back to the animals you’ve seen, it doesn’t take a bullet to do this, obviously different kinds of trauma could cause it. It could be caused by a simple “nose bleed,” or it could be caused by shock. If you have gravity working for you, it wouldn’t be too hard for the body to just leak out as was sometimes seen.
Realising that this thread was resurrected this morning, I can throw in a little here.
On Sunday, my dog died. At a community fair he was poisoned by an anonymous someone who dropped GHB into a water dish that one of the stallholders put out. The results were - and I’m being controlled here, because I don’t want to summon up all the emotions at work - unpleasant.
Nevertheless, just before he stopped breathing he had two seizures. During the second one, a blood vessel in his lungs appeared to have burst and he bled quite copiously from his mouth and nose during his last moments.
Oh my God. I have no comment on the thread topic in general, but just wanted to say to BigNik that I am so sorry that happened to your dog. That’s awful. 
Thanks, MsWhatsit - but I wasn’t trying to turn the thread into a pity party. I’m absolutely gutted, but it’s a little less raw than it was earlier in the week.
Hi everyone,
Animals bleed from the mouth or nose directly after death because of internal bleeding, which may be either from trauma or disease/infection.
Trauma that would cause this would be force trauma from being dropped at distance or being (usually) unintentionally stepped on or kicked (small cats or dogs/mice/hamster/gerbils). With trauma, it takes organ, arteries, veins, or soft tissue rupture and flow would happen towards the mouth or nose from the digestive track or lungs once the body is no longer flat, but angled with the head down.
Disease or infection usually cause swelling or inflammation to occur. Lung diseases, cardiac failure (sudden or chronic), upper GI infection or disease, or the organ failure of old age can cause organs to increase blood flow as a body’s way of compensating for oxygen/nutrient loss. Often blood or other fluids begin to fill the lungs as the heart fails or if there is a severe bacterial/viral infection of the airways such as pneumonia.
Blood, like most fluids, travels the course of least resistance and gravity when it flows.
Flow of other fluids mixed with blood usually comes as decomposition progresses and pressure creates new avenues for expelling them, such as burst ear drums or bursting of organs into other organs or areas having previously expelled their contents.
The lower digestive track may or may not release its contents immediately or shortly after death, due to lack of anything there (chronic health problems, diet or starvation/dehydration) or organic/structural obstructions that hinder the action. It can expel blood, if any inflammation there recedes after death and the large amount of blood bursts walls/capillaries. Force trauma to the area can also cause this to happen immediately. Usually what is in the lower track comes out the bottom of the torso, because of the structure of the intestines.
I extend my belated condolences to the author of this thread. I am one who needs to know the minute details of things to understand them and I sincerely hope this helps.
YGH
YGH,
Thanks for this. It sounds like exactly what happened to my dog this past Sunday. She was 16 (very old for a 50lb dog) and she died quietly while lying on her stomach. When I found her, I could have sworn she was sleeping but she didn’t react when shaken and a light shined into her eye gave no pupil contraction. Her body was still warm, so she had not been gone long (pooling or decomposition were unlikely). When I rolled her onto her side, some blood bubbles came out of her nose and when I lifted her (very limp, no rigor), copious amounts of blood came from her nose and continued to run out as I carried her away. I assumed massive heart failure but I began to fear that maybe she had choked on something. I know she had not gotten into any rat poison, as she never strayed far from home.
Your explanation makes sense and fits in with what I have been thinking. Thank you for taking the time to post.
Awww, saddest zombie thread ever. Sorry XM316.
Double zombie (or even triple if you count a three-month gap)… quite an appropriate topic as well.
I have seen the same thing several times with dead animals in the yard (squirrels); I don’t know how they died but not from trauma (I think), probably what You Grow Hair said.
Huh. An odd time for the thread to resurrect. I last posted shortly after Morrissey’s death, I’m picking up a new puppy next week.