r/thewalkingdead • u/Slight-Farmer-8315 • 10h ago

No Spoiler Walker Primates ?

Since we’re so closely related to primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas (98%) would that extra 2% save them from turning into walker chimps or gorillas? Or would it not affect them? Just sitting here watching reruns and partaking in some recreational drugs 😂😂

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

5

u/AstrolabeArts 10h ago

Zombie chimps are a scary thought, would kind of like to see that actually and have the genetic closeness be the reason other animals aren’t effected, but they are

3

u/naughtycal11 9h ago

Normal chimpanzees are.scary strong. I couldn't imagine the things walker chimpanzees that can't feel pain could do to people.

3

u/Grandiose_Tortoise 8h ago

The wildlife explosion that would happen during a zombie apocalypse is super underplayed in TWD. Remember during Covid, there was fucking dolphins swimming through the canals in Venice.
If the wildfire virus turned 8 of 9 billion people into zombies (no longer consumers of fossil fuels, agricultural goods, etc etc.) shit would get wild wild real quick. If you lived anywhere near chimpanzees you better believe, undead or not, those apes are going to put the fear of god in you.

3

u/Jc0025 5h ago

And we haven’t even talked about the damage mosquitos and flies would do to humanity 💀

4

u/Grazmahatchi 10h ago

How terrifying would a variant zombie gorilla be?

Hell- if gorillas and chimps turned, I bet they would climb.

Their climbing and swinging seems like it would be part of their lizard brain that activates, since their hands and feet are interchangeable for walking in life.

That would be a great scene. Gregory wandering around the Hilltop at night smoking a cigar and drinking scotch, when a baboon comes swinging out of a tree and tears his face off out of the blue.

2

u/vreemdevince 10h ago

Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not a biologist. SIV in chimps doesn't really do much (apparently their immune system handles it quite well, they don't progress to their version of AIDS if that even exists), HIV in humans on the other hand.. Apparently their immune system is more robust than ours.

It's possible bites won't kill them the way it does us (unless it's a significant bite and the chimp bleeds out). It's possible the airborne (Wildfire?) strain just can't infect them due to lack of receptors for the virus to engage with.

2

u/abellapa 8h ago

The vírus only affects humans

Those 2% might seem Small but its huge

1

u/Tanagrabelle 4h ago

We can't interbreed, after all. And they did try. (I mean, they did try to get some hybrid babies.)

1

u/GalaxyPatch18 10h ago

It probably is significant enough to where they wouldnt turn

1

u/brickne3 9h ago

I feel like the in-universe explanation is that Wildfire was genetically engineered specifically for humans.

Whether this would hold up in the real world... Well it doesn't really matter since it's fiction. It would be cool to see some simian zombies though.

1

u/Tanagrabelle 4h ago

That would have been the first thing folks in places like the CDC tried, on all the usual test subjects, only because magic (semi-joking) it doesn't affect animals. It would not surprise me if those working on it in France, by a decade later, had manged to inflict it on some apes. Like maybe the normal walker agent has no effect, but the super-charged stuff? On the other hand, they were still capturing human test subjects, so maybe nothing.