What Do Zombies Eat? (Diet & Nutrition)
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A zombie can be very gruesome because it operates by using its reptilian brain. This is the brain's partly responsible for the body's survival function, such as controlling the heart rate, body temperature, breathing, balance, and feeding.
A zombie doesn't feel emotions, reasons, or compromise, unlike human beings with the conscious brain sections such as the limbic( reasoning, value judgments) and neo-cortex ( learning a new language).
This means that a zombie's thoughts are all about satisfying their survival needs, i.e., feeding. However, a zombie can react to the environment, especially if a small portion of its brain or heart is still working,
What do zombies eat? A Zombies main desire is to fill its belly with living human flesh and their hunger can never be satisfied no matter how much they eat.
The reason zombies cannot be described as cannibals is that they do not feed on each other's flesh but rather the flesh of a living human being. A zombie is physically similar to humans, only that it doesn't t have a conscious mind.
After the zombification process is complete, a zombie's flesh isn't fresh anymore, making it unpalatable for the fellow zombies. This means that if all humans were to be bitten by a zombie, the zombies would eventually die since they won't cannibalize each other.
They would roam around in search of living humans and rarely living animals. For the same reason we humans don't attack our fellow humans for food, a zombie too won't eat the fellow zombie's flesh.
Diet | Why Do Zombies Eat If They Don't Get Any Nutrition?
To properly understand this strange zombie behavior, it's important to remember that a zombie isn't a person or a type of animal. The dead person's body is just a mere vehicle under the influence of a pathogen.
The rotting corpse has no consciousness, but its main agenda is to spread the virus through a bite to a living human being.
A live human being bitten by a zombie will eventually become a zombie once they die. The infected corpse has no needs, no feelings, or thoughts, so eating human flesh is a way of spreading the virus to a new person.
The zombie achieves this through the activation of the primitive section of the corpse's brain. This primitive section of the brain will benefit the zombie directly.
Below are parts of the brain activated to help the zombie achieve its mission.
What Happens If a Zombie Doesn't Eat?
Since a zombie isn't powered by the flesh it consumes, nothing will happen to it. Although its desire to bite a living human may escalate, its ultimate death won't be due to staffing.
It will keep on wandering, looking for a live human being to devour until it decomposes entirely or it's killed.
Zombies aren't immortal, and this means that fire can consume them entirely.
The Hypothalamus
The purpose of activating this brain section is to increase the zombie's desire to bite as many humans as possible without feeling satisfied to eat more. A zombie will continue attacking living human beings even though its belly is full.
The zombie sensation of hunger doesn't end no matter how many people it strikes. Feeling hungry is typical the only feeling present in a zombie, although it doesn't think it's hungry to eat. Unlike a human being who eats to solve the problem, a zombie has no rational decision to consider when to stop eating.
The Sensory Cortex.
This is to make the zombie see, hear and even smell prey even when hiding several meters away.
The Motor Cortex
The zombie must move from one place to another in search of food.
Besides, mobile limbs help a zombie seize the prey so that it feeds on its flesh without escaping. Typically, a zombie doesn't think, it's time for lunch, let me eat something'; it just feels hungry.
Since it's only the primitive function of the brain functioning, a zombie doesn't have any conscious thought, which is why a zombie doesn't even have mercy on the victim no matter how much they plead not to be bitten.
A zombie's tummy won't get complete regardless of how many people it bites, and their hunger will never be satisfied. According to World War Z, a literature work by Brooks, a zombie will eat excess flesh to rapture its belly, thus splitting its abdomen open.
The aftermath is spillage of previously eaten flesh which the zombie will collect and eat for the second time and even the third time until the flesh is dead enough to attract the zombie's interest.
It isn't a wonder to see a wholly fed zombie continue feeding until its digestive track cannot hold any more flesh, thus forcing the previously eaten flesh out through the exit door.
Ironically, despite the insatiable desire to eat flesh, a zombie has no functional digestive system, which means that the fresh eaten will eventually decompose in its belly.
Typically, a zombie hunger can't be satisfied, which means that it will continue feeding until no living human being is left. The zombie will eventually die after exhausting all the living human flesh.
Zombies will continue biting living humans to transmit the zombie virus, although unconscious of what it is doing. The zombies won't eat flesh from a dead person.
This is because biting a dead person won't help transmit a new infection. In simple terms, if there are no chances of transmitting the virus, then the zombie won't waste its effort biting. A victim can only transform into a zombie if the biting was done while the victim was alive.
A zombie's greed is powered by their primitive portion of the brain, which is active. A zombie will abandon a fleshly bitten victim to attach a new human even when it's not done devouring the previous victim.
The longer the flesh has been dead, the higher chances of a zombie abandoning it to pursue a new victim.
Why Do Zombies Eat Brains?
Although the zombie's greed for human flesh is insatiable, the idea of zombies eating brains never was until the 1985 film, Return of the Living Dead.
According to this series, a zombie can be killed by damaging its brain while those zombies in Russo's film are immortal. In the quest to understand why a zombie would eat a brain, an official explanation is that the zombie felt better by ingesting brains as it helped them relieve the excruciating pain.
Another cause is that zombies have higher serotonin which compels them to eat the brains of living humans. Is this true? In the film Return of the Living Dead, zombies aren't interested in eating the brains.
Although the zombies' dietary preference is living flesh, the fact is that zombies aren't fueled by the food' they consume. The first suggestion of zombies eating brains was the George A Romero 1985 film, the Living Dead's Return.
In a different movie, the Zombie land of the 'Warm Bodies,' zombies eat brains to retain memories in those brains.
The Romero zombies, just like those in The Walking Dead film, will eat any human flesh it is but do not search for a particular part such as the brain.
Digestive System | Do Zombies Go To The Bathroom?
Technically, a zombie doesn't have a digestive system. Yes, the active digestive system of a zombie is absent since, after all, a zombie is a dead person who has come back as a walking corpse after reanimation.
Zombies lack consciousness and thus are compelled to bite any living human they come across and other living animals even though eating' human flesh doesn't benefit them regardless of how much they eat.
According to the film Living Dead, it's evident that zombies lack an active digestive system. Their dormant digestive tract doesn't take an active role in extracting nutrients and excreting waste from their body.
This implies that the partially chewed and ingested human flesh lies in the tummy in its undigested state. The matter starts decomposing while in the abdomen, but this will have no impact on the zombie's appetite.
The ingested matter continues accumulating until it exits through the zombie's anus, or else the tummy explodes open, but it will continue eating more flesh.
Although zombies poop and even pee, it's out of their conscious mind; they do not understand what is happening to them.
What Do The Zombies In Walking Dead Eat?
Although a typical zombie will only go for the human flesh over that of animals, that isn't true in The Walking Dead. These zombies are incredibly gruesome and will attach flesh from anything alive, from human beings, mice, wild animals to horses.
These zombies are under the influence of their reptilian brains. In the zombies' world, it is all about food, and a zombie doesn't seem to care about sleeping or where to shelter. Yes, it is all about how it can survive long since it isn't a human being anymore.
Zombies will, however, prefer feeding on fresh meat over the dead one. They are pretty greedy as they eat whenever a chance arises, whether during the day or night. Although the food isn't their fuel, zombies don't need to eat to survive.
The consumed food gradually lots in their tummies until the zombie dies or the belly explodes, but this doesn't worry them anyway.