What is the best apex predator to thin the zombie herds?
A global epidemic of H1Z2 virus has rendered 95% of the population into zombies. The zombies have lost most of their frontal and temporal lobes so the following capabilities are either severely degraded or missing: decisions about right/wrong, suppression of socially inappropriate behaviors, new memory formation and sensory analysis. Viral damage to their cerebellum has rendered them clumsy. Zombies still have beating hearts but healing from injuries is highly impaired.
The zombie's physical capabilities are exactly the same as a humans. They are as strong as, and as breakable as uninfected humans. When they aren't feasting on humans, they are wandering around scavenging on whatever carrion they can find.
Up till now, major apex predators such as wolves, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my) have studiously avoided contact with humans because such contact equaled pain or death. But that is no longer so. Many apex predators now find human-like things wandering through their territories and appear to be easy meals.
There is no doubt that a non-human apex predator is a superior killer to a brain-damaged zombie. Which apex predator would be most effective at killing the most zombies in the shortest amount of time? The zombie outbreak is world-wide so any predator can be nominated.
Assume that H1Z2 is only lethal to humans and has no effect on animals. For simplicity sake, let's assume that H1Z2 does not mutate to have an effect on animals.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/23192. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
As you point out, any large predator should be plenty able to kill a human, given a reason to do it. Hunting for food could certainly be one such reason.
Tigers already kill humans directly, and according to Wikipedia (cited),
tigers cause more human deaths through direct attack than any other wild mammal.
It takes no great stretch of imagination to see those tigers gaining an advantage in a world where killing of these zombie-humans is essentially free of risk yet still provides a decent meal for the animal.
Tigers are not particularly numerous currently, numbering some 5,000 in the wild, about half of which live in India and a tenth respectively in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Russia. It is certainly possible that virtually absent predation from humans, and presented with a low-risk source of food, this number could rise, but that would take some time; at the very least, you'd be looking at years or decades for any significant increase in the population.
If you want something to present persistent predation on these zombie-humans over time, tigers may be it, or at least a part of the overall answer. If you want a cataclysmic-type predator in our current world, there just aren't enough tigers to go around to provide it, and you'd have to look at predators that are far more numerous in the wild.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads