Death is the ending of all those vital biological functions which allow an organism to maintain its life, such as respiration and homeostasis.
All these processes result in a living organism being much more organised, or complicated, than its surroundings. When the processes that make it so, stop happening, that which is more complicated can no longer maintain itself.
The dead plant or animal now begins to change, until differences between it and its surroundings in temperature, pressure, chemical composition etc have equalised as far as possible.
Anne Evans
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