An antelope falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it. But there are plenty of things that will eat it. Blowflies and flesh flies land upon the carcass and start to feed on it. They also lay eggs, which hatch into maggots that also start devouring the dead flesh. The antelope will eventually disappear, but fragments of its DNA still exist inside the guts of the insects that feasted upon it.

And that’s great news for conservationists who are trying to work out what lives in this particular forest. They don’t have to hack their way to undergrowth in search of a skittish and elusive antelope. They just have to catch the flies.

That’s exactly what Sebastien