Rigor Mortis Facts

I thought about accompanying this post with an image (Did you know you can get photos of dead birds at morguefile.com?), but in this case, a picture might not be a great plan. I get a lot of questions about the biochemistry behind rigor mortis. What is rigor mortis? Rigor mortis is the phrase used to describe the stiffening of muscles in a person or animal that occurs shortly after death. By shortly, I mean between ten minutes and a few hours, depending on temperature and a few other factors. The muscles become locked into place for about 72 hours, so whether or not rigor mortis has occurred and whether or not a body is still stiff can be used to help ascertain a time of death in criminal investigations. In animals, meat is said to be at its most tender if it is aged to where rigor mortis has ended and muscles (meat) relax again. The relaxation is due to leakage of enzymes that were isolated within cells. The enzymes are a sort of natural meat tenderizer.
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