Zombies Love Tryptophan.

Zombies used to say “brains” and that was what they were after. Just brains. But then modern-zombies started eating the whole person. There’s a huge difference there. My theory is that while older zombies went after our “moral” cores, the new zombies go after our “identity’ cores.

At the end of Night of the Living Dead, a bunch of rednecks have some zombies strung up from a tree, and are shooting at them. Barbra is visibly disgusted. These barbarians are no better than the mindless brain eaters that had earlier terrorized a house full of survivors. The barbarians are just as brainless, or a-moral, as the zombies.

But you’re modern zombie film or TV show is about guts. Do the characters have the guts to do what needs to be done to survive? Or will they give in to a false sense of themselves, the person they “used” to be, and in the process, be taken down by a hungry horde of intestine-gobblers?

Here’s the key, and the cheap thanksgiving tie-in: Tryptophan. The tryptophan in turkey, and most meats, most protein-possessing foods, gets converted in your body into serotonin. Ninety percent of that stays in your gut. So when the zombies eat your guts, they’re getting a nice fat dose of serotonin. And since they’re brains don’t work so good, that serotonin stays in their gut, too.

They eat it so that their guts will keep working, allowing them to eat more. This circle is the core of they’re identity. Not eat to live, or live to eat, but eat to eat. Juxtaposed to that is the survivors. They eat to live, of course, but their vicious circle is about survival. They survive to survive.

And what’s survival but evading death? And what’s death but the big sleep? And what’s serotonin but the sleep transmitter? And what’s serotonin but what is made out of tryptophan? And what’s tryptophan but the amino acid that comes from Turkey? And what’s turkey but the result of “living to eat?”

Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful that we can choose who we want to be: Gluttons. Even zombies don’t get to choose that.

Would a Zombie Eat a Turkey?

Basically, from the neck down, there isn’t much difference between people and animals. So when zombies were eating just brains, we could see why they weren’t eating animals—there was something about human brains they wanted. But now that they’re eating everything, why aren’t they eating everything?

The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude its because people are everywhere. Or, people are where people are. When a person becomes a zombie, he is in place where there were people. There’s probably a term for this in virology. Like target-rich environment, or close-sector vectoring, or something.

And it might also be the case that animals can’t turn into zombies. I know this has been treated in a few zombie movies. Help me remember—did 28 Days Later have zombie dogs? I can make an excuse for that—dogs are basically humans, when it comes to social structures, especially human ones.

Either or, we could say that the only reason zombies aren’t eating animals is because there are no animals around. They would, like in the first episode or The Walking Dead, when they ate that horse. Would a zombie eat a turkey? Would it make the zombie sleepy?

No, and no, I say. No because they would not recognize it as food, or sentient, for that matter. Turkeys have a reported IQ of -10. I am not making that up. They’re basically plants with feathers. No, worse than that. Plants at least don’t drown in the rain. Turkeys will stare at the sky when it rains until their gullets fill with water and they keel over.

Yes, all of that comes from myths that are as perennial as the “eating turkey makes you sleepy” trope. But zombies are fictional too. I can put turkey tropes in my zombie world if I want. And in that world, turkeys are stupid and safe from zombie attacks. They're symbols of a world where there are no shuffling gut gobblers.

In that world, people gather once a year to appreciate just being alive. Then they chase down a turkey, rip it to shreds, and devour it in greasy bites just because that's what zombies wouldn't do.

That's what thanksgiving means to me.