Zombie Research Society
Most zombie movies have at least one infected character who hides his or her worsening condition from the rest of the group. S/he gets bitten on the arm and then simply rolls the sleeve down, pretending nothing ever happened. Filmmakers use this device to heighten drama and drive action, but in a real zombie outbreak failure to identify and isolate the sick could mean certain death. Fortunately, your pet can help.
It’s been widely shown that animals perceive subtle changes in the bodies of nearby humans. Dogs are now being used to find cancer and other diseases in humans well before medical science could. Nicholas Broffman of the Pine Street Foundation for Cancer continues:
“Cancer cells emit different metabolic waste products than normal cells, and the differences can be detected by a dog’s keen sense of smell, even in the earliest stages of disease.”
Whats more, evidence suggests that cats are able to predict a person’s death, up to thirty minutes before the actual event, simply by sniffing the air in the room. They can smell changes in organ function that even the most advanced monitoring devices miss.
There’s little question that the transformation caused by a zombie infection could be easily picked up by any number of common and exotic animals. So when the dead rise, pay close attention to your pets. They want to stay alive just as much as you do, and chances are they’re a lot more aware of what’s actually going on.
Well, personally I would choose an oliphaunt (the large war elephants from LOTR) 😀
I’d refer to Dave Barry on the value of relying on cats for survival.
Personally I’ll stick with my cat, he’s loyal, quiet, and he brings me food. Recently a women was rescued after 3 weeks in New Mexico. She had her cat as the cat was in better shape because he was able to hunt little rodents and other small game. My cat would bring “presents” all the time. The last thing I would want is walking though a forrest looking for food, hear something dog takes off and starts barking. That just says “food” to the zombies, next thing you know you got a horde of undead stumbling toward you. Dogs would be at home probably in a kennel used like they were in zombie survival guide to sniff out the infected.
Could the animal making noise eg. barking, growling not give you away?
Yeah that’s what I mean. If the dead rise and you got blood in your mouth but hid it, and a dog sniffed you out from people who weren’t infected, they would know what he’s barking at. But say you had a person with cancer and a person who had been bitten by a zombie and a person with no disease, then you’d be able to tell which is the person who hasn’t got an infection, but you wouldn’t be able to tell who’s got what between the person with cancer and the person who has got infected by the zombie.
How can animals actually tell you that the person is infected? They can’t talk or anything. Maybe it’s the way that they behave after they’ve smelt it, but they can’t tell you if the person has cancer, can they? They might bark but they can’t say “oh she’s got cancer.”
I suppose it would be easier if zombies invaided the earth. They can bark and it’ll only mean one thing I guess.
It’s the same as drug/bomb sniffing dogs. All dogs are capable of smelling the stuff out, but they must be trained to look for and alert you of the presence. A drug sniffing dog will ignore a bomb and vice versa, so you should be able to easily train a dog to give certain audio/visual cues when a person has been infected.