Insects don't count days — they count heat. A blowfly maggot needs a fixed budget of warmth to reach each stage of its life, measured in degree-hours: every hour, it banks the number of degrees the air sits above a species threshold near 10 C (its "developmental zero"). Below that line, the clock stops.
So the same maggot reaches third instar in two days of summer heat or a week of cold — the calendar time changes, the degree-hour total doesn't. That is why a cold night stretches the clock.
A crowd of maggots cheats a little: a feeding mass generates its own heat, running 10–20 C above the surrounding air. Ignore that and you'll over-estimate the time since death.
Reading time of death. Investigators identify the oldest larvae's stage, pull the hourly temperature record from the nearest weather station, and count backward until the degree-hours add up to that stage. The elapsed time is the minimum post-mortem interval — real, defensible biology. Reconstruct the wrong temperature and the estimate drifts, which is exactly where the method must be used with care.
Something in the simulation stopped unexpectedly — the lesson continues without it. Nothing you did was wrong; you can move on.