It's interesting seeing the progression of the walkers. They picked up teddy bears, picked up rocks to smash windows, climbed up ladders, climb over fences and that seems to stop in recent episodes

 

I think the idea I heard on TTD was that the older the walker get's the more rotten it becomes.
You may have noticed in the more recent episodes in season 4 how some of the walkers were almost skeleton like at this point with just some rotten flesh covering their decomposing ligaments and bones.

 

Seems like a good explanation but after the first season, it just seemed like they were never the same lol.

 

Hunger vs. Sentiment

My theory is akin to Salmon spawning; some memories kept within the brain throughout life can be passed on to offspring, to increase self-preservation. Some traits and instincts can be hereditarily transfered from one brain to another.

Any creature with a functioning cerebral cortex should have a basic outline of survival to remain annimated. So, as we are presented the abilities of "Walkers," it would correlate that attractions to heat/touch, light/sight, sounds, and smell are all supporting factors in triggering memories.

Just like the "Wolves" learn to use Pavlov's theroy of conditioning on zombies, I believe that humans could learn to use various ways of getting the undead's attention without using live bait. I.E. A nuclear powered generator with a timing mechanism would be very efficient in drawing a horde from a far distance away.

Maybe Eugene will figure it out.

 

Clearly the implications of this are that tainted salmon caused the zombie outbreak.

 

Yeah, gonna have to say it's because the zombies in the series were smarter in the beginning than they are now.

 

I rewatched this episode last night (after acquiring the complete series 1-4 boxset, woohoo!) and this did strike me as odd, especially in the same episode as a walker trying to get into her old home. It's clear that the original writers had a slightly different idea of what their version of zombies should be like, but it's easily explained. Walkers must have some vestigial memories and awareness (which is awful, thinking about it), but it's likely these fade over time as the brain rots. At the start of the series all walkers were relatively fresh, so there would have been more smart ones.

 

The decision was actually that of Frank Darabont who wanted the Walkers to be a bit more capable and dangerous as opposed to the mindless zombies we have now. When he was fired after writing and filming the first 3 episodes of S2, Glenn Mazzara replaced him and they immediately lost and kind of threatening feel other than the ability to 'herd up' and bite / scratch you.

I would think for continuity purposes that some of the fresher walkers would've atleast been a bit more.. able.

 

Really? Oh wow. I really need to pay more attention to the walkers then. I didn't notice any changes in them. But I did think that was really stupid of a zombie to pick up the teddy bear, and now they basically can't do anything.

I have a feeling that will change, tho...

 

Actually, the whole, who of TPTB, and who was fired and why, etc., I know nothing of the back drama. Does anyone know?

 

TIn S2 we didn't see them picking anything up in the first 3 episodes but they still could run and were more dangerous. Less than an episode afterwards they struggled to walk and would basically let you kill them until the last possible second. Now they grab you and don't even bother scratching unless the plot calls for it.

Frank Darabont demanded a higher budget after they gave him twice the episodes and slashed the episode budget in half. After he was fired the show was handed to Mazzara and Jeffrey DeMunn left as he's a principal actor for FD. Laurie Holden is also somewhat of a principal actor for him so it's speculated that she may have tried to or discussed leaving the show. It's well known that Glenn Mazzara had some kind of unwarrented hated for the Original actors.

For example;

Nearly every cast member he killed off was hired by Darabont. Shane was actually going to live well into S3 for the Prison / Woodbury arc under Darabont's rule over the show.