• Question: will zombies ever exist in a mater of fact would they eat human

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Helen Gath

      Helen Gath answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Hi MagicalUnicorn, it seems you’ve been watching some good gory Zombie movies!

      I’m rather relieved to say that Zombies could never be real, so we’re safe from being eaten anytime soon!

      If I am correct, zombies are humans which have died and come back to life. Some humans do ‘die’ momentarily and come back to life; sometimes a person’s heart can stop for a few minutes and then starts pumping again. In some people’s opinions this is what defines death. But there’s more to it than that. When you die, your brain stops working, and our brain is the control centre directing the rest of the body to work in a way that keeps you alive. The brain tells you to breathe, which provides a supply of fresh oxygen to the whole of your body. If you can’t get oxygen to all the cells in our body, they can’t function properly, which means we can’t stay alive. And when a cell dies, it cannot be brought back to life. Which means zombies couldn’t exist.

      We could go down the route of asking might a human eat me, which is typical ‘behaviour’ of zombies…but that would have to be another question ;p

    • Photo: Gemma Marsden

      Gemma Marsden answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Hi magicalunicorn123,
      Helen is correct – no known virus, bacteria or chemical can re-animate a corpse! Most scientistis think that for a zombie to be viable all the major organs, including parts of the brain would have to work and then the creature isn’t really a zombie!
      There are diseases caused by parasites that cause ‘zombie-like’ behaviour in humans and animals and also toxins that could do this. An example of a parasite include Toxoplasmosa gondii and example of a toxin include tetrodotoxin from a pufferfish. These don’t tend to cause people to eat each other though!

    • Photo: Ekbal Hussain

      Ekbal Hussain answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      I certainly hope not!! I’ve seen enough zombie movies to be scared of them already.

      But luckily for us, as Helen and Gemma have said, it isn’t possible for human zombies to exist for real. Pheeeew

      Ekbal

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