Why don't Zombies eat each other?

[Fletch]

Here's my informed opinion...lol

Rage zombie - has enough awareness to distinguish between infected/uninfected and preferentially chooses uninfected subjects in order to follow the biological imperative 'reproduction' as squinty said, there's ome weird stuff out there, the ant example is particulalrly disturbing as in the daytime the infected ant goes to work, comes home smiles at the kids and kisses the wife, but when the sun dims, he runs out of the hive and tries to get gobbled up, if unsuccessfull, it's back to the nest for another day of toil until he gets eaten. life's a bitch hey?

Undead Zombie - slow version - is able to distinguish uninfecteds by noise. My thought being that although the Z is dead, some part of the brain is reanimated and although the eyes become cloudy (scratches building up over time on the cornea due to lack of fluid/blinking) the hearing only gets better. why? because as the head 'dries' out, the tympanic membrane also dries out and becomes more sensitive to noise in the short term, long term it's gonna dry out and crack making it useless - that my friends, is why sometimes when you see an Undead Z in a real bad state they cock their head slightly towards you, trying to home in on your heartbeat.

UZ - fast - These assholes eat anything that moves slower than them. that is all

(I shouldn't need to state that I'm being fantastical, I know bugger all about biology, very aware all of the above is probably either physically impossible or plain bollox)

[Hanzo]

You might as well ask, "Why don't zombies eat apples? Why don't they day trade?"

not really the same now is it?

[Spookadelic]

Depends on the mythology, of course. However, I always imagine zombies with their limited cognitive ability sometimes tasting each other when ravished or in a frenzy, only to discover/re-discover that other zombies aren't food. Much the same way a shark sometimes "tastes" a surfer, only to discover surfers aren't food. These zombie on zombie bites, lend to the overall wretched appearance of zombies in general, especially on the arms, face, neck, and shoulders.

[NoAm]

Who would eat zombies?! (I guess they would taste like dead chicken), but then chickens are dead when we eat them! Now I'm confused, maybe I should just go vegetarian! *Shrug*

[Fletch]

Good point NoAm, do vegetarians turn into vegetarian zombies... (insert crude joke about 'vegetables' and coma patients etc)



I have wondered what happens to a coma patient that gets infected.... do they wake up?

[craig_o]

You might as well ask, "Why don't zombies eat apples? Why don't they day trade?"

not really the same now is it?

Sure it is.

When you consider that Zombies are only after one thing and one thing, asking why they aren't after something else is ridiculous.

[Hanzo]

In some stories Zombies will eat anything made of flesh that moves. Zombies are made of flesh and they move, apples are not made of flesh and they don't move. Eating one another fits right in with the one thing they are after Flesh. Day trading, soccer, porn, and juggling have nothing to do with eating flesh...well maybe porn. So no, it's not the same.

[SaintPendulous]

LOL
The more obvious answer -just like sharks and lawyers - Professional Courtesy.

HA!

[00Servo]

Maybe the infection alters what the host percieves to be food, kind of like how being drunk makes you think you wanna bone fat chicks?

And just to be a smartass: Zombies don't eat each other because that would cause them to become double infected, like multiplying negatives, and causing them to become human, and no human wants to respawn in a crowd of zombies.

My take on the OP topic is that zombies ignore each other because the virus/parasite needs to spread. Can't spread to an already infected host. Who's to say that zombies are driven to feed soley by instinct. Maybe it's also the virus/parasite's need to spread to uninfected hosts. The plague, no matter what your poison is, has already shown that it can and will take over a host's brain and motor control. Using the instint to eat isn't that much further of a stretch.

Ooh, perhaps the zombie's mind is affected by the mind of the infection?

[SaintPendulous]

Well according to Max Brooks and the Zombie Survival guide anyways, the undead are attracted to living HUMAN flesh, they can tell the difference and again (according to the ZSG) they are interested in only living humans so not animals?

Naturally people will have different opinions and theories....but we can all agree...The Undead Suck

[Wildeman_13]

You might as well ask, "Why don't zombies eat apples? Why don't they day trade?"

Great... thanks... I used to have an irrational fear of Zombie Clowns. Now, it is an irrational fear of Zombie Clown Daytraders. I will never sleep again.

I'm thinking it is the dead/cold flesh bit. There are animals that will not eat anything that gets too cold and vice verse some that only eat cold/dead flesh. They will nibble on your toes until you chill off enough where they just arent interested anymore. This is why you get some zombies that are totally chewed on, while others are barely gnawed. One died slower than the other.

[NecroDavid]

Actually.... we answer this very question in our next paper, PHYSICS II... which will be published in days....

If you're not aware of us, we're at necropology.com

~David

[maldon007]

In my zombieworld, they try, but the zombified skin is too tough to bite through

[Redshirt]

So the real question to drill down to is:

What cues the zombies to living human flesh? Can we design a radio that emits a frequency to prevent them from hearing our heartbeats? Do we douse ourselves in tomato juice to hide our scent? (You've got red on you.) Other ideas?

[NecroDavid]

So the real question to drill down to is:

What cues the zombies to living human flesh? Can we design a radio that emits a frequency to prevent them from hearing our heartbeats? Do we douse ourselves in tomato juice to hide our scent? (You've got red on you.) Other ideas?

VERY insightful, we asked ourselves that too! What cues a zombie to living flesh?

We focused on vision in our recent paper, The Physics of Zombies II: Madore's Rules of Zombie Vision and Visual Target Confirmation

It's available for viewing off of our website http://necropology.com

Let us know what you think...

~Dave

[NecroDavid]

There's an article about our Zombie Vision paper up at:

http://wezombie.com/the-physics-of-zombies-ii-madore%E2%80%99s-rules-of-zombie-vision-%E2%80%93-scholarly-article-review-2/

~Dave

[Gh0stWithaZERO]

Zombies know the difference between dead flesh and live flesh or infected and not infected so they seek out the latter one because the virus gives them the need to spread the infection.

[flsgear]

I think that part of the zombie disease is that all of a sudden everything tastes like shit. Except live people - they taste like pork. And brains? That's the part that tastes like bacon.

See? It all works out.

[tedbeau]

Zombies don't eat each other because they aren't real, you!

Anyone and everyone who posts shit like this in the Zombie Biology threads deserves to be punched in the ball bag. Seriously, you're in the thread section that's here for the sole reason discuss the fictional zombies. Man up and pull the stick out or simply keep on walking, we don't need your BS. Nor is it wanted. People who come to the biology/combat sections and start posting crap like the quote should be considered trolling.

My take on the OP topic is that zombies ignore each other because the virus/parasite needs to spread. Can't spread to an already infected host. Who's to say that zombies are driven to feed soley by instinct. Maybe it's also the virus/parasite's need to spread to uninfected hosts. The plague, no matter what your poison is, has already shown that it can and will take over a host's brain and motor control. Using the instint to eat isn't that much further of a stretch.

Wow, after that thorough and excessive ass-reaming I'll have to repost. First, relax, I think you misunderstood the tone of my earlier post - but I admit that was my fault. Enough, please, about my ball-sack.

On topic - since Zombies are fictional, I guess you'd have to refer to the particulars of whatever movie, book, or folklore you had in mind. Undead zombies may refrain from eating each other for entirely different reasons than rage-infected zombies or classical enslaved voodoo zombies. "Return of the Living Dead" zombies don't eat each other because only living brains ease their pain. "28 Weeks Later" zombies seemed as determined to puke on the living as they were to eat them.

I'm pretty sure that rabid dogs (closest living analog to Rage I can think of, explicitly referred to in "Quarantine") would attack each other, as rabies just makes you agitated and paranoid - but there are real life parasites that elicit surprising behaviors from their hosts, every bit as specific as the 'eat this not that' bias of (live) flesh craving zombies, like you described. In the intro to "Breaking the Spell" Daniel Dennett talks about a parasite that infects ants, causing them to become phototropic - to move compulsively up towards light. So infected ants climb to the top of whatever stalk of grass they encounter until they fall off, then compulsively climb again. This makes the ants easier prey for larger animals to catch and eat. The parasite thrives and multiplies in the gut of whatever animal eats the ant, and it's descendants get pooped out by the animal - whereupon they can infect more ants who come into contact with that poop.
A "Zombie" parasite might work the same way, making anyone who didn't already display outward signs of infection look tasty or provocative to the poor host.

It's interesting that you mention rabies. I remember a movie starring George Kennedy where he gets infected with rabies. He chains himself to a pole in the barn and tells his family not to let him loose no matter what. He tells them he may start being paranoid about water. (They used to call rabies hydro-phobia). Then he realizes that there may be a flash flood coming due to a storm in the mountains. Now he can't get his family to let him loose so they can flee the flood. I think this is a prime example of how a zombie virus could alter the behavior of the host. It could create a desire to eat flesh.

[Hollowpoint26]

The OP assumes the infected (I'll call them zombies for all intents and purposes) actually devours flesh at all. My take on a plausible scenario would be for the zombie to do whatever it can (and at all costs) to spread the virus. Basically, this virus replaces any normal "needs" a human would have, with the need to transmit the contagion. Biting, scratching to create an opening for infection. Spit, Blood, contact with infected tissue on a wound, bile or any other type of excretion could be the means of transmission.

This is all theoretical, obviously, but I like to stay as reality-driven as I can about this subject.

[anewcowboy]

I'll take my "knowledge" on Zombies from "The Walking Dead", I'm not quite sure what all the reasons were but one of them is because they SMELL dead and we, well we smell alive as you all know we excrete pheromones naturally and due to the lack of specific senses (like that of blind/deaf people) their other "in-tact" senses still thrive and are therefore increased. Like a dog, they have poor vision but have a heightened sense of smell. Zeds don't necessarily have the sense of "touch" or it's lowered due to little to no brain activity. They survive on what is very much like basic human instinct eat whatever you can find, though it seems flesh is preferred cause I ain't never heard of a veggie eating zombie. Final summation? Do what they did and cover yourself in zombie innards and you'll blend right in... Talk about grey man.

[anewcowboy]

In my zombieworld, they try, but the zombified skin is too tough to bite through

Real bad sunburns?

[anewcowboy]

Good point NoAm, do vegetarians turn into vegetarian zombies... (insert crude joke about 'vegetables' and coma patients etc)



I have wondered what happens to a coma patient that gets infected.... do they wake up?

I'm thinking yes, Through the phase of "transmogrification" the host body falls into a coma where the brain completely shuts down, after the infection has fully spread it releases a "kick" (maybe endorphins of some sort) that defibrillates (spellcheck? for lack of a better word) everything but only activates the basic motor functions and survival nodes in the brain.

Sorry all about the multiple posts I hope I'm not bugging anybody with it.

[Carl666]

I'm going with, they only like the flesh of the living. I've seen zombies eat animals. In The Walking Dead (best show ever!!), one is eating a deer and they cut one open and find I think a squirrel. And I believe I've seen them eat animals in another movie before.