Cool story, but all of this hinges on the hypothesis that animals couldnât be infected and that they would want to feed on zombies.
Well, if zombies could infect animals, the apocalypse would be over in days, as there is no way the surviving humans could protect themselves against zombie sparrows, crows or even zombie insects.
And even if large animals would abhor zombies, itâs unlikely that said decomposers and single cell organism or fungi would leave them alone.
So, If the wildlife took care of all the zombies, Iâm thinking there might be a much bigger problem. The overpopulation of the wildlife.
This is why the Mira Grant zombies make more sense. Anything warm-blooded and over 40 lbs can become a zombie through viral amplification. It doesnât have to die first.
So the critters donât take out the zombies, they become the zombies.
Funerary cannibalism is rare because of the disease environment, not because of some universal instinct. I think that, knowing diseases can be contagious, and encountering zombies, and not knowing whether zombeism can be transmitted by eating infected flesh, most of us will naturally avoid eating infected flesh. I suspect that some animals might be more sensitive to our diseases, and others less so, and even in species susceptible to our diseases, some individuals might be immune. Like with myxomatosis.
Given that in zombie narratives, that they fail to decay beyond a certain point or be affected by insects, that tends to indicate theyâre inedible, somehow. That wouldnât stop them from having run-ins with aggressive animals, of course. Iâm imagining an elk with a zombie stuck on the end of its antlersâŚ
None of the predators would know how to kill a zombie. Theyâd try to rip out its jugular and/or bite down and strangle it. Meanwhile it would be biting back and/or ripping out intestines.
Insects are more likely, but presumably they must only rot/be edible to a certain extent if theyâre still shambling months/years down the line.
Someone pointed out a couple years ago that the zombies would go down under a swarm of maggots in a couple weeks. Also bacteria of all kinds would attack their flesh, not just the disease causing pathogens that are good at evading our immune system. Heck, after a while youâd see them sprouting mushrooms (has happened a couple time in humans IIRC). For that matter, theyâd start to sprout trees after a while.
Pretty much everything organic is swiftly degraded by the biosphere. There a few inorganic products of live organisms, such as sea shells, that can accumulate in vast geologic layers. Although there arenât many biological artifacts like this, there can be huge piles of the stuff lying about.
it would be a really neat shot in a zombie movie to have a hoard of zombies being picked to pieces by a giant flock of crows as they bear down on the surviving heros of the story
First read this as âgiant flock of cowsâ
In WWZ, the zombies were explicitly toxic(in some probably-scientifically-problematic way). At least one section discusses military working dogs, which cannot safely bite the zombies; but are valuable in detecting, avoiding, and/or putting a bullet through the head of, them. However, zombie-toxins are otherwise never mentioned, and appear not to leach out into bodies of water where active zombies are hiding, affect humans who survive close combat encounters with zombies that would (in the case of an actual toxin) leave the place spattered with aerosolized whatever-it-is, and so on.
I suspect that, as with most things zombie, it comes down to the fact that zombies just donât make thermodynamic sense, and so are either ârabies++â zombies, which are aggressive, fast-moving, and still very much alive(at least until their dubiously logical behavior causes them to starve or die) until they are just another dead mammal or they are supernatural necromancy zombies, who are indeed decaying like the dead meat they are(albeit possibly at a rate dictated more by narrative causality than strict adherence to real-world decay rates); but will simply become skeletons, animated by the same unnatural powers of undeath, once the meat is gone.
Anything not in one of those two camps, you are really just handwaving for the sake of having zombies; because thatâs an end in itself.
Presumably, unless your zombies are directly animated by Dark Powers (as skeletons are), substantial destruction of muscle tissue would still âkillâ the zombie in terms of being an actual threat, even if massive intracranial trauma is the canonical weak point.
Itâd probably surprise the first few crocs who tried to win a drowning contest with a zombie in their jaws(though the tearing caused by the croc snapping its head back and forth would be severe), and it would reduce the efficiency of a lot of other predatorâs preferred methods; but every major muscle compromized or tendon severed would be another blow at the actual danger presented by the zombie, until the smaller decomposers finished the job unto the last edible moleculeâŚ
This here is some great scientific analysis. It has just the right quotient of scienciness, as Colbert might say.
I especially liked how Zombies would be fodder for vultures and bears because they are carrion, but would be prey for big cats because those cats donât like carrion but prefer fresh meatâand what could be fresher than the undead who are being decomposed by bacteria and insects? I have no doubt that âif a zombie got too close, a moose would stomp it into an immobile pile of gore without a secondâs hesitationâ: walk around Newfoundland for a while and youâll see the little piles of gore all over the place from every time a human out for a stroll got too close. And in places like Banff where there are large population of Elk within the townsite people are impaled and dismembered on an almost daily basis.
If weâre talking about The Walking Dead zombies, any part still substantially attached to the head seems to work, even if itâs just the head itself.
Also, a single bite seems to kill via an infection not exactly the same as the one that causes zombieism, as all the humans already have that and donât drop dead. Potentially any predator that tried was wiped out rather quickly.
Even without the microbes, wouldnât the sun more or less desiccate the zombies into motionlessness? A few weeks of sunshine and no circulatory system, means that everything would shrivel up, especially if there are open wounds.
Great point. Itâs not vultures, eagles, or wolves thatâs going to take down a decaying zombie. Itâs the maggots.
Well to be fair, thatâs only because the Newfies are trying to have sex with them.
In WWZ (the book) the zombies are infected by the Solanum virus which turned the flesh toxic and thus immune to most forms of organic breakdown including bacteria, presumably until bacteria evolved to overcome the toxin just as we are inadvertently developing super-bugs by overdosing on anti-biotics.
This doesnât seem the case with the Walking Dead virus, But any bite is typically packed with bacteria, zombie causing or not and so an animal that tries to eat a zombie could possibly die from an infected bite.
Also concerning aggressive herbivores, we donât make a habit of actively attacking such creatures with our hands and teeth, in fact unless we are hunting them we try to keep a wary distance which suits both parties just fine.
rabies ++ zombies (seen in the movie I am legend and the game left 4 dead) are still living animals. As living animals they would be at worst only slightly more vulnerable to the carrion eaters in the article as compared to normal aboriginal humans (like primitive tribes). But probably more vulnerable to hunting animals or animals they spook like big carnivores, moose, elk, etc since they have no sense to stay out of the way
if they are living animals then they have to eat and drink. If water sources are plentiful and the weather is good, then food is the limiting factor. Imagine a city and the surrounding countryside. Now cut off the trains and trucks that deliver food and have all the farmers go on strike. A city would run out of food in a few days to weeks. Same thing if everyone in a city became a zombie. No one imports food an no one is farming or raising livestock. Within a month or two cannibalism and starvation would reduce the zombie population to very low levels, levels that could be sustained by foraging and hunting
in an isolated city with poor climate like las vegas in summertime, thirst alone will kill a lot of zombies. In northern cities like new york, a single bad winter would do the same
