Why would a zombie eat only human flesh?

Question

I am writing a fiction novel about a zombie that can eat nothing but human flesh to keep itself going. So any other kind of meat will have no effect. Sure, horror stories do use that idea to make it more scarey (or a living dead film with zombies raiding McDonalds is pointless!), and that's why I too am using that restriction. But in the story, I want to use an explanation (whether scientific, supernatural, etc) for why the zombie keeps itself "living" on human flesh only and nothing else. Any ideas for such an explanation?

Answer 1

Maybe that because the Zombie was once human that it needs the nutrients, minerals and vitamins from the same species (humans) in order to survive.

Answer 2

The same reason in horror films vampires only tend to suck the blood from people, in the original Bram Stoker book Dracula is supposed to have killed everything on the ship to England, including all the animals, and they find dead sheep before he takes a human victim on land. But dead sheep are not that scary, so in modern films they skip all the animal killing and go straight to the humans, thus making it scary. With Zombies the idea is they need 'living flesh' for the same reason we don't eat rotting meat, most animals hunt to eat, the zombies have been reduced to their animal base, but unlike lions they cannot digest rotting meat because they have human digestive systems. I'm sure if the zombies were smart enough to use refrigeration and packet meat then they would. The other idea is that the zombies were engineered by (the Government, a mad doctor or the Nazis) as a weapon to attack people, but then they escape. In regards to the question of them digesting the meat I think the idea is that they are too stupid to know any better, in fact because they can't digest it they are always hungry.

Answer 3

I don't know why you can't just require that the zombie eat living flesh in general. OK, they can't eat dead or cooked meat, but there is plenty of precedence in the zombie fiction for them to eat other animals if they're alive. In the original "Night" a woman zombie picks a bug off of a tree and eats it. In Max Brook's new zombie novel "World War Z" they describe a zombie that saw a mole rat burrow into the sand and the ghoul sat there clawing at the sand for days trying to catch it. They just need the flesh to come off of a living subject. I think the main reason animals don't often become zombie appetizers is that most of them are too fast to catch, even for a living person! Now, if you really insist on making your character require only human living flesh, perhaps you could explain that a "spark" or something in what's left of the zombie's DNA causes him to seek out that same DNA in its prey...hence, other animals would not work...even chimps. Yet another possibility is to have the zombie view the world the way many real-life predatory animals do: I know from experience keeping many types of reptiles, especially snakes, they often will refuse to eat anything but that which their brain is hardwired to tell them is edible. Maybe the zombie virus commands its victims to seek only other people!

Answer 4

The zombie is undead and rotting away, it needs to eat living tissue to replace the dead that it is losing.
heres a question. How does the zombie know the difference between human flesh and a Mc chicken sandwich. Im not a zombie but sometimes Im hard pushed to find a difference

Answer 5

Maybe they can only eat something with a true soul, so you could say that animals don't count. Perhaps the souls were the main things that kept them "alive" and "healthy". This also has the added twist that only live humans can be eaten, as a dead human would lose their soul.

Answer 6

the zombies can only ingest human proteins as an energy source -- since they don't actually digest their food, their metabolism depends on a rapid absorption of comparable proteins. Animal flesh would not suffice

Answer 7

A Zombie would replenish the flesh it had lost but it would quickly decay and therefore would need to continually restock its appetite

Answer 8

Have you done any research before you asked the above question. I guess not. For if you did you would know that no true zombie consumes anything. If you want to know why? try doing a little reading about them its all there for all to see.................

Answer 9

Well, it could be that it can only digest human flesh.

Zombism could be caused by a bacteria or a virus and can only survive in a human's dead carcass and spread's it's self by using it's hosts digestive track.

That help?

Answer 10

Because humen flesh are good meat.Some parts are better then others.Meat is meat.Does´nt Mather where it comes from.