by Mogk, Matt
ZOMBIE SMELL
Another notion of zombie hunting behavior made popular in part by the hit AMC television series The Walking Dead is that zombies identify the living primarily through sense of smell. Though they are rotting corpses and therefore likely give off the revolting scent of death, the undead’s olfactory abilities may be enhanced through the same process that is a common side effect observed in users of psychedelic drugs.
Hyperosmia is a condition in humans that causes an acute increase in the ability to smell. It is often seen in patients with cluster headaches or migraines, but tests have shown that recreational use of LSD can result in the same or a similar outcome. Because it’s generally accepted that zombies are driven by their brains, it stands to reason that a brain disorder affording the living a tremendous increase in their sense of smell may also be at work in the undead.
The other corpse had already awakened next to it. Its face twitched up and down as if sniffing her through whatever remained of its nose.
—Star Wars: Death Troopers (2009), Joe Schreiber
People suffering from Addison’s disease, wherein the adrenal glands produce insufficient steroid hormones, are also inclined to experience hyperosmia. Zombies are unlikely to be producing steroids with their limited body functions, so a de facto Addison’s hyperosmia scenario could be at work.
THE PACK MENTALITY
The modern zombie is nothing if not relentlessly aggressive, but the second-most universally espoused belief about undead behavior is that zombies generally move in large packs, or hordes. However, they are also thought not to work together when seeking out and attacking prey. This seeming contradiction could be explained away by their hunting style, or it could be a function of something more innate within the zombie’s core being.
When it comes to the zombie horde, could a more developed social structure be at work? Honeybees, along with ants and wasps, are able to carry out complex tasks involving thousands of individual participants with little or no communication. They all do their own thing, completely unaware of what their fellow bees are up to, but still they present a unified front, each marching toward a single goal.
Furthermore, the aggressive behavior created by the hive mind of bees is extremely similar to a typical depiction of a zombie outbreak. A horde of zombies may not work together or communicate in any traditional sense, but at the same time, they really represent a formidable threat only when they present a unified front, attacking as a group.
A colony of bees is often described by experts as being functionally one creature. Each bee is just a part of a single entity. Looking at the undead in a similar way would help to explain why they possess such a complete disregard for their individual well-being. The destruction of one particular zombie is meaningless to the horde, as long as they continue moving forward toward the ultimate objective of devouring the entire human race.
Ants use this same method of universal mind, and they also hunt primarily through sense of touch and smell, as suggested in the previous section.
DO ZOMBIES MOAN?
Pick a zombie movie made in the past fifty years, and chances are you’ll hear at least a few of the ghouls moaning up a storm. Very scary on the big screen, but are real zombies actually able and willing to make primitive utterances? Research out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, suggests that they’re likely silent, and it all boils down to the meaning behind a dog’s bark.
The extensive 2009 study concluded that barking in dogs is associated with a clearly definable behavior known as mobbing, a cooperative antipredator response. By contrast, wild animals normally have plenty of room to move, so when they hear something, they silently run away or run toward the source of the noise. But even in the wild, animals that can’t flee or attack will bark, head researcher Kathryn Lord explains:
Even birds bark, and certainly many mammals besides canines, including baboons and monkeys, rodents and deer also bark. In a whole bunch of mammals and birds, what they do in conflicted situations is bark.19
They bark as a warning to a perceived threat to leave the area and as an alert to other potential prey that danger is near. But because zombies are thought to be single-minded predators with no defensive instinct at all and because it’s widely held that zombies don’t hunt in coordinated teams, the argument for a moaning zombie has some clear logical flaws.
If they’re not trying to ward off a threat or alert their partners, why would they bother making any sound at all? Noise only serves to reveal their position and makes their objective harder to obtain. Don’t get me wrong, I hope zombies moan. I hope they play instruments and march down Main Street like a Thanksgiving Day band so we can all hear them coming from blocks away. Unfortunately, that just might not be the case.
Bucking later popular trends once again, Romero’s flesh eaters are silent. In some of his films, such as Land of the Dead, they do display very limited vocalization, making utterances only when directly communicating with other zombies. They never engage in prolonged bouts of moaning for seemingly no reason and often sneak up on unsuspecting victims because they are so quiet.
In her bestselling book Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin explains that attacks meant to kill for the purpose of feeding are nothing like the growling, loud encounters that animals have when trying to protect themselves or their territory. Extensive observation has proven that a killer on the hunt is almost always quiet and expressionless. In fact, animal behaviorists commonly refer to predatory killing as the “quiet bite.”
This evidence reinforces the argument that zombies likely don’t moan. Grandin states clearly that animals on the hunt have no strategic reason to make any sound. In fact, noise puts them at a marked disadvantage and so is avoided at any cost.
So remember, just because the zombie at your front door isn’t moaning and growling doesn’t mean it’s not interested in eating you alive. On the contrary, it may be more focused on that than even the most realistic Hollywood ghoul.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
BEN:
You mean you didn’t hear the racket we were making up here?
HARRY:
How were we supposed to know what was going on? Could have been those things for all we knew.
BEN:
That girl was screaming. Surely you must know what a girl screaming sounds like. Those things don’t make any noise!
10: DEFENSIVE REFLEX IN ZOMBIES
The 2008 film Pontypool follows the crew of a small morning radio show as reports of random violence and riots begin pouring in from callers in the usually sleepy surrounding town. It soon becomes clear that citizens are being turned from innocent victims to raving maniacs that will stop at nothing to attack and kill those unaffected.
Before long, the host and his producer are locked inside the sealed radio booth as their infected assistant outside slams her head repeatedly into the thick soundproof glass until her face is little more than a shattered mass of broken bones and swollen flesh. She wants what she wants, and she’ll stop at nothing to get it. Though the film takes artistic license with the new breed of living-zombie story, Pontypool’s infected largely remain true to the relentless nature of the modern zombie in that they display pure unchecked aggression. They attack with no sense of consequence or concern for counterattack or injury.
Zombie defensive strategy is unique to all other species, both real and imagined, in that they have none. Why are the undead hordes forever on attack? What makes them show no concern for self-preservation? And how do they process pain?
CAN ZOMBIES FEEL PAIN?
It’s widely believed that if you take a swing at a zombie with the business end of a shovel, it will not duck out of the way. Because of this, some mistakenly conclude that zombies don’t have any physical sensations whatsoever, going as far as to say that this lack of feeling is a physical advantage over normal humans.
In reality, a zombie with no physical sensation would be unable to move. Far from terrifying, this c
reature could do little more than lie on the ground and bite in your general direction. Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek echoes this sentiment, stating conclusively that one key element in a zombie’s ability to walk is the ability to feel the ground beneath one’s feet.
However, it has been suggested that neuropathy, a disorder commonly associated with advanced diabetes that results in nerve damage and impaired sensation, can explain how zombies may be able to stalk humans without having any physical sensation. But Tina Tockarshewsky, executive director of the Neuropathy Association, refutes this argument, explaining that neuropathy causes numbness and pain in the hands and feet, creating a loss of sensation comparable to the feeling of wearing thin socks or gloves. It doesn’t eliminate sensation or pain.
As neuropathy progresses, it results in reduced, or altered, sensation in the arms and legs. This is different from no feeling at all. If left untreated patients could eventually lose sensation altogether and be rendered unable to walk and confined to a wheelchair.
Though a zombie set on fire may not react to bodily injury, the fact remains that physical sensation must be present for it to grab, clutch, claw, tackle, chase, chew, bite, and effectively hunt the living. However, it is reasonable to suggest that zombies may not feel pain.
People with a rare nervous system disorder known as congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) have no ability to sense pain, but they are able to feel pressure. Therefore, CIPA patients can navigate the world just as any other person does—they walk, run, play—but in doing so, they risk serious injury to themselves without even knowing.
CIPA sufferers often experience burns, broken limbs, and other self-inflicted wounds because their defensive reflex is largely shut off. Even though they can feel a knife going through their hand, it doesn’t hurt, so why avoid it?
In humans, CIPA can prove to be an extremely damaging condition. Teething infants chew their tongues and lips to bloody shreds. Toddlers play too rough and hurt themselves and others. Teens act even more recklessly than their peers, and the problems often get worse with age. By contrast, in a zombie, this same trait would allow them to go to any length to accomplish their morbid objective.
Dead Set (2008)
VERONICA:
Just make sure you pin his head down and cover his teeth.
JOPLIN:
What if he gets loose?
VERONICA:
Do it right and he won’t.
JOPLIN:
Yes, but what if he does?
VERONICA:
Then he’ll probably kill us!
WHAT DO ZOMBIES SEE?
Though it seems likely that zombies have at least diminished pain receptors, a clearer understanding of how visual information is processed by the brain may shed some light on their lack of involuntary responses, such as flinching and ducking. To that end, Rita Carter’s work The Human Brain Book proves an invaluable resource. Carter explains that there are actually two types of vision present in humans:
Conscious vision is the familiar process of seeing and recognizing something, while unconscious vision uses information from the eyes to guide behavior without our knowledge of it happening.20
Put another way, our conscious sight allows us to recognize the undead mailman as a zombie coming to eat us, and our unconscious sight helps us avoid the falling tree branch we didn’t even realize we saw in the split second it comes crashing down.
Therefore, a lack of defensive posturing in the undead may be explained by a failure in its unconscious vision. Regardless of whether it can feel pain, understand a threat, or even desire to avoid physical damage, that zombie at your front door simply might not be able to see the bat in your hand before you connect with the side of its skull. This may especially be true if zombies’ reaction times are greatly slowed, as is often theorized.
THE BEST DEFENSE IS A GOOD OFFENSE
Findings out of Italy suggest that the undead’s lack of defensive behavior may have more to do with their hardwired strategy of coping with the threat they face than with their visual abilities.
In August 2010, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory discovered a switch in the human brain that controls fear, identifying the specific type of neuron that determines how animals react to frightening stimuli. When the switch is “up,” a passive, fear-based response is triggered. When the switch is “down,” aggression takes hold.
Study leader Cornelius Gross clarified the results, explaining that they were not blocking the actual fear but just changing the animals’ responses to that fear. So in the case of zombies, their complete lack of defense, even when experiencing severe bodily injury, could simply mean that their fear switch is locked in the down position. The larger the perceived threat, the more violent and aggressive they become.
Still further research suggests that zombies may allow themselves to be freely injured as a selfless gesture that benefits their fellow ghouls. Evolutionary research conducted at Michigan State University’s Beacon Center for the Study of Evolution in Action proved that populations of organisms that are physically or genetically similar act altruistically, thereby protecting the survival of the larger group. By that logic, it stands to reason that the reckless behavior of zombies could be a subconscious by-product of this same process.
Though it’s generally believed that the undead don’t technically work together in battle, any single zombie can function as the perfect decoy, sucking precious time, energy, and resources from a survivor, even as the initial attack fails. This ensures that future resistance will be weaker, thereby substantially increasing the odds that zombie number two, three, five, or ten will eventually succeed.
In the Michigan State model, regardless of the zombie body count, the final meal is always a steaming pile of fresh you.
11: ZOMBIE EATING HABITS
Ask anyone with even a casual knowledge of zombies what the undead eat, and more often than not, the response will be “Braiiiins!” But despite popular belief, the undead likely don’t prefer your brain to any other part of your living body. In fact, the concept of a zombie craving brains is unique to the Return of the Living Dead film series, a semispoof collection of B-movies from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The flaw in this premise is revealed through simple physics.
Bite-compression work done by researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the United States’ oldest technical university, found that the human mouth is both too flat and too weak to penetrate a human skull. Predators have long mouths that protrude outward to allow them to use their full force when biting down on their prey. The human mouth is inset and unable to open wide enough to get a good grip on anything larger than an apple.
Other less popular theories put forth in Return of the Living Dead include that burning zombies spreads infection; zombies can talk, think, and reason; zombies know how to use car radios; and any animal can become a zombie.
Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)
JOEY:
Come here, Brenda. Brenda!
BRENDA:
Joey, you stay away from me.
JOEY:
But your brains smell so good. They smell so rich and spicy.
BRENDA:
Spicy? Joey, I am not into dead guys!
In fact, some research suggests that zombies may not eat anything at all but, rather, just bite and chew. Though seemingly simple, the act of swallowing is a complex neuromuscular activity controlled by several different parts of the brain. As it’s commonly believed that the zombie brain is low-functioning compared to that of the average human, evidenced in part by lack of speech, swallowing may prove too complex a task for a zombie. Additionally, eating may be a death sentence.
Decomposition begins in the stomach, as bacteria feed on the soft tissue and organs. Pumping more soft tissue into the zombie gut could be like pouring gasoline on a flame. The rotting process might speed up, and the zombie would become a worthless pile of goo in no time flat. And even if zombies could swallo
w, they probably would not be able to digest what they ate. How often do you see a zombie stop for a bathroom break? That could lead to massive bloating, sluggishness, and loss of balance, as their midsections become stretched like heavy, rotten watermelons, further reducing their threat to able-bodied humans.
If zombies don’t actually eat anything, is it possible that the undead may increase their longevity by literally eating themselves from the inside out? Many of the human body’s internal organs, once vital to the survival of a living person, are not likely needed for a zombie to function. Because of this, the newly reanimated corpse has a portable store of food built right into its framework.
Humans can go weeks without food. But as they eventually reach the later stages of starvation, the body will literally eat itself. In fact, digestive-related organ failure is what usually kills a starved person. By contrast zombies may have no need for many of their organs. They would then be free to digest the heart, lungs, liver, and intestines without suffering any ill effects, thereby substantially increasing their life span.
Regardless of whether or not zombies actually swallow the human flesh they bite into, if they are able to digest their own organs, then the undead may be able to fend off harmful bacteria, while continuing to generate needed energy and extending their lives.