Transcript
One important question of zombie survival is how do zombies hunt? If we could figure that out, we may have a much better shot of surviving when the dead actually do rise. Some movies, zombies hunt by the sense of smell. You could, for instance, cover yourself in zombie guts and they won’t be able to smell your humanness and walk among the zombies. Other movies, such as ‘Shaun of the Dead’, they hunt by sense of sight. If you shamble around like a zombie, you can get away with it until somebody sneezes and they figure you out.
One interesting theory about how zombies may hunt has to do with the Etruscan Shrew. The Etruscan Shrew is the smallest predatory mammal on the planet. The interesting thing about the Etruscan Shrew is that it has to eat its entire body weight every day or it will die. It’s on a constant, relentless hunt for food. Secondly, it hunts thing that are its same size, so rather than hunting little gnats or bugs, it hunts, for instance, crickets; same size and weight as the shrew. The shrew is tiny; it’ll fit in your hand like that. It’s like a tiny gerbil. Lastly, the shrew hunts primarily through sense of touch. The shrew will see a potential prey across the field, it will walk over to it, but it won’t decide if it’s going to attack until it actually touches the other creature. It’ll touch a black beetle and say, “No, I don’t eat black beetles. I’m not going to eat that.” It’ll touch a cricket and say, “Yeah, I love me some cricket. I’m going to eat the hell out of that.”
If we think about this in terms of zombies, it answers two questions that constantly come up in my mind anyway: One is that if zombies are thought not to work together, why are they always walking around in packs? If we think about this touch theory; if I’m a zombie and you’re a zombie and we see each other across a street, we both walk towards each other, touch each other and realize, “Oh, no. A dead, rotting zombie, cold-blooded, clammy, feels a lot different than a warm, living human, so I don’t want to eat you.” Then we end up walking next to each other. Repeat that a thousand times and you have 1,000 zombies happening to walk next each other right to your front door.
Secondly, it would explain why zombies are always depicted as having their arms out. If zombies hunted by sense of smell, they would be using their nose, they would be processing the world through their nose. If they hunted by sight, they would be doing the same things with their eyes; they would be standing still and looking around. Zombies process their world with their arms. They’re constantly reaching out, grabbing for things, figuring out what things are. That falls in line with the touch method.
