University of Florida Veterinary Forensics Externship

We are excited to share Beau Brown’s domestic experience below, funded by Charlie’s Angels fund.

My two-week externship with the Veterinary Forensics team at the University of Florida was enriching, engaging, and illuminating. I walked into this unique opportunity with little knowledge about the veterinary pathologist’s role in forensics. A veterinary forensic pathologist performs necropsies on domestic animals and wildlife to find a cause of death or demise. I learned different approaches for performing necropsies. For example, numerous photographs and detailed physical description is required for all cases. Samples of various body parts and organs are saved fresh for toxicologic evaluation. Cooperation with law enforcement is crucial to determine the animal’s clinical history and its life antemortem to make correlations to pathologic findings. While at UF, I collected DNA evidence to determine which animals attacked a man and a cat and if the turkey that was hunted was the correct species open for hunting season. The final day of my externship was dedicated to forensic entomology. I learned about the various careers for forensic entomologists, including in criminal justice, medicine, and food retail. I learned about harvesting insects at a crime scene and their usefulness when investigating the time of body colonization. I participated in collecting maggots on a corpse and grew them to identify the fly species. Though I am committed to a career in clinical pathology, I consider veterinary forensics an alternate career path that would be very rewarding.