Stacks of dead pigs line a freezer at the Department of Entomology at the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil. In the past six years, lab technician Verônica Saraiva Fialho has been stockpiling the carcasses, which she procured from the university’s pig breeding farm. Around sunrise, she carts several of the bodies out to a nearby forest. Fialho, affectionately called “the Girl of Dead Pigs” by some of her friends, then leaves the pigs in the forest so she can study the beetles that eat and live on rotting flesh.
This gory work is a dream come true for Fialho. As a young girl, she used to walk in the forests near Teixeiras in Brazil with her grandfather. Whenever they came across dead animals on the ground—monkeys, dogs, anteaters—Fialho would stop, lift the carcass, and look for insects. The many kinds of ants, flies, and beetles she found there captivated her. ...
