When I was a kid, we used to explore the woods all the time. I came across a couple dead mice or birds in my time, but they were always recently deceased.
But tons of animals live and presumably die in the woods. Why aren’t the woods covered in deer and bear and raccoon skeletons? Where are all the bones going?
In: 4903
Bones are only partially made of the hard calcium based stuff. A lot of marrow and even more is collagen(raw gelatin). This collagen rots, just like it would inside a piece of meat in damp enviorments like the forest floor. That only leaves a more porous and fragile bone that is easier to break and dissolve.
Scavangers and even deer and such also munch on bones, scavangers for food(marrow) and deer and such as a sort of natural vitamin gummy. Lots of healthy minerals in bones that are more difficult to get from just vegetable, leaf or grass food. So bones become natural salt licks.
And finally, bones dissolve over time. Rain is a bit acidic and so is the soil in many places. That slowly dissolves calcium based salts and washes them away.
And a final point is that predators and scavangers might eat more then you think. Mice, small to medium sized birds and such are not chewed of the bone by most creatures but swallowed whole. Owls puke up most hair and bones but most things just dissolve them in stomach acid. Smaller bones of larger animals might suffer a similar fate. Larger bones are also seperated from the animal skeleton as they are being dragged of.
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