flies in my eyes

Forensic entomology involves knowing a lot about flies. You have to be able to identify them, figure out how old they are and with information about temperatures, calculate about how old eggs, larvae, pupae and/or adults might be. I've been reading a book on this for quite some time now and I finally got to the chapter that contains the taxonomic keys. Keys are those little tools that give two choices and eventually lead you to an identification, kind of like those "choose your own..." books that were popular when I was growing up. For instance, the key might say something like "three hairs on metathoracic segment distal to coxae...2 or 2 or 0 hairs on metathoracic segment distal to coxae...3". And then at 2 or 3 you get more choices.

There are keys for adults and other stages and tons of fun photos of eggs, etc. You'd think there wouldn't be much of a difference between the eggs of different species within the same genus, but there can be quite a bit if you can see enough detail. Of course I didn't memorize which picture went with which species since I won't have any flesh flies to identify anytime soon, but still it's cool to know that I could identify them if I wanted to.

I'm thinking about donating my corpse to a forensic entomology study when I die...any takers?