In the Walking Dead universe, we very quickly become familiar with “Walkers”, the zombies of this story. When A person dies in this universe they reanimate as a Walker and start attacking people without hesitation.
One thing about these monsters is their mysterious intelligence. Looking at the First Walking Dead compendium for the sake of simplicity. We see many events involving these beasts’ intelligence. Firstly we see very clear signs of limited recognition in which people are walking with the zombies undetected by covering their bodies in the entrails of a freshly killed walker, The zombies were unable to detect them because of the smell but once it wore off then they began to act hostile again suggesting that the Walkers can change perception based on new knowledge.
They also can recognize sources of food and even linger where they know food is such as hospitals and prisons. Some more unclear signs could be hearing recognition, mild speech, or group-based hunting. However, something very big we see is the act of someone “taming a zombie”. A good chunk into the book we meet a character named The “Governor” who is seen lingering with his family of zombies, he brings them food, and even tries to treat them like living people and it works. They seem to recognize that he brings them food and as such they don’t kill him but instead mind their own business and even show a small amount of submission toward him.
Looking at all of these points it seems fair to say that these creatures display very limited learning abilities, recognition via scents, familiarity with sources of food, and even a very very little amount of obedience or even symbiosis. Even though these feats sound respectable they are still outweighed by mental weaknesses such as almost no spatial awareness as they run into everything, inability to recognize threats with the number of times they walk up to someone and get slaughtered immediately, no sense of problem-solving abilities, and no concept of association that isn’t connected to food giving these creatures an intelligence level similar to a koala or cane toad which isn’t exactly very smart.
By coincidence however there is another much more interesting connection to intelligence, The Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis also known as the zombie ant fungus has strangely familiar connections to the behavior of these rotting beasts. The zombie ant fungus works by infesting the minds of worker ants through airborne spores, after the ant is infected it will become controlled by the fungus leading to the ant climbing above the nest from either a tree or some other stilt, The ant then becomes immobile and is consumed by the newly sprouted mushroom so that the cycle may repeat itself. Very Strange.
#zombies #psychology #animals