produce insufficient steroid hormones, are also inclined to experience hyperosmia. Zombies are unlikely to beproducing 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 continuemoving 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 predatorswith 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
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 continuemoving 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 predatorswith 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
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