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Postmortem interval (PMI) estimation is central to forensic death investigation, yet taphonomic data from tropical  West Africa remain scarce. Furthermore, only a few published Nigerian studies have examined how clothing  interacts with body mass in hanged decomposing carrion. Four Sus scrofa domestica carcasses (two adult, ~38 40 kg; two juvenile, ~25–28 kg), divided into clothed and unclothed pairs, were humanely euthanized and  suspended by hanging to mimic death by hanging for 30 days in Cross River State, Nigeria. Total Body Score  (TBS), accumulated degree days (ADD), abdominal circumference, and microclimate variables were monitored  daily. Trajectories were fitted using Gompertz and logistic growth functions, with clothing, age, and interaction  effects evaluated via residual-resampling bootstrap (2,000 iterations). All carcasses exhibited strong Gompertz  fits (R2 ≥ 0.95). Clothing status and age group interacted significantly on decomposition rate: clothing modestly  slowed decay in the adult carcass but nearly tripled it in the juvenile carcass (interaction effect on Gompertz rate  constant = −0.289, 95% CI [−0.359, −0.221]). At a TBS of 15, the unclothed juvenile carcass took nearly twice  as long (11.6 days) to decompose as the clothed juvenile (6.0 days). Normalised bloat and deflation kinematics  did not differ meaningfully by clothing or carcass mass. Body mass and clothing interactively shape the  decomposition of hanged carrion in tropical environments, with the direction of the clothing effect depending on  body size. Regional PMI models for tropical hanging deaths should treat clothing and age as interacting rather  than independent variables.

Key Words: Postmortem interval, taphonomy, forensic entomology, tropical decomposition