Raccoonsicle

SolidusRaccoon · Post by **SolidusRaccoon** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:17 am

Shyal_malkes · Post by **Shyal_malkes** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:35 am

ok, so it's animal cruelty if the culprits DID kill it before freezing it?

am I missing something here?!

Cuerden · Post by **Cuerden** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 7:06 am

shyal_malkes wrote:ok, so it's animal cruelty if the culprits DID kill it before freezing it?

am I missing something here?!

Roadkill.

Ann Vole · Post by **Ann Vole** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 12:32 pm

shyal_malkes wrote:ok, so it's animal cruelty if the culprits DID kill it before freezing it?

am I missing something here?!

That's what I was thinking

but if they find out the suspect killed the raccoon before freezing it they could charge him or her with felony animal cruelty.

or if they killed it by freezing it to death (but I guess it would be hard to prove that method of killing)

Shyal_malkes · Post by **Shyal_malkes** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 12:54 pm

imo...
actually if it were alive while freezing the blood would be flowing as it froze which would make a specific kind of pattern (like how they keep ice cream from making a huge chunk of ice when they freeze it by keeping it moving)
whereas if it were already dead that pattern wouldn't be there, don't belive me? just take some ice cream put some in a cup and let it melt in the cup and then refreeze it, the ice cream in the cup should be a lot harder then the ice cream that never melted (assuming you haven't eaten it all yet)

DracoDei · Post by **DracoDei** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:04 pm

shyal_malkes wrote:imo...
actually if it were alive while freezing the blood would be flowing as it froze which would make a specific kind of pattern (like how they keep ice cream from making a huge chunk of ice when they freeze it by keeping it moving)
whereas if it were already dead that pattern wouldn't be there, don't belive me? just take some ice cream put some in a cup and let it melt in the cup and then refreeze it, the ice cream in the cup should be a lot harder then the ice cream that never melted (assuming you haven't eaten it all yet)

Your knowledge of the physics of freezing is correct as near as I can tell. Your knowledge of biology/chemistry is a bit off though, unless MAYBE MAYBE if we assume they used liquid nitrogen on the limbs and worked there way inward toward the heart. The problem is that death from hypothermia occurs when the blood is still at a tempurature noticable above freezing in almost every species (there are some arctic fish that are the only exception that I have heard of). Thus the blood would be still when freezing regardless of the mode of death. Whether the blood had time to settle in the lower part of the body (not meaning tailward, but gravitationally downward), if rigor-mortis had set in prior to freezing, and the body posture (trying to conserve warmeth?) could all maybe be clues that could be looked at to tell the difference. The Medical Examiner could probably do all of this without help, but to have it stand up in court he might have to have a vet working with him to rubber stamp (or not) his proceedures and reasoning.

Shyal_malkes · Post by **Shyal_malkes** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 6:27 pm

then perhaps something with the O2 content within the blood itself.

my reasoning (and I cannot assume it is near correct) would be that if it were dead first the cells would still be alive and therefore drawing oxygen from the blood as much as possible without the blood getting any more back in return (cause it's not flowing to and from the lungs and etc).
whereas if it were dead upon freezing the rate at which it got oxygen would more closely match (I doubt it would EXACTLY match but it would be closer then if it had died first) the rate at which it lost oxygen and might still have some oxygen left in it after if froze.

also living cells may freeze with different crystolic patterns and different cellular damage then already dead ones.

in the end I don't know I'm just guessing.