Odor
The museum’s director, Bertha Sue Dixon, added to the anthropologist’s story that this process of natural dehydration also helped the body to avoid scavengers. Because there were no active microbes on the body, the dead animal was a lot less fragrant. This made it a lot less noticeable and therefore attracted fewer scavengers.
The body wasn’t completely odorless, of course, but the smell that was present would have blown up through the hollow trunk, away from the animals looking for the body. This all sounded very logical, but how did the dog end up in the tree in the first place? This was the question that preoccupied the spectators.