1000 defunct zabbix processes

[relikwie]

Hi, have running zabbix agents version 1.1.6 on two AIX 5.2 servers.
After two weeks when I looked I saw this:

/var/log/zabbix # ps -ef | grep zabbix | pg
zabbix 22732 86696 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 24902 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 25674 86696 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 26600 66966 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 26968 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 27554 56000 4 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 30872 56000 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 31316 114312 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 31758 114312 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 32014 114312 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 33096 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 33464 86696 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 33628 56000 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 34276 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 35618 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 36312 56000 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 36592 86696 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 36890 86696 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 38410 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 38832 86696 2 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 39178 66966 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 39808 86696 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 39938 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 40436 114312 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 40632 114312 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 40932 56000 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 41672 56000 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 41914 86696 6 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 42046 56000 5 0:00 <defunct>
zabbix 42500 1 0 Mar 21 - 4:05 /usr/local/bin/zabbix_agentd
zabbix 42910 66966 5 0:00 <defunct>
..........

and the list is growing, in fact I have 1000 of these processes:

/var/log/zabbix # ps -ef | grep zabbix | wc -l
1001

Can someone tell me what could cause this? The log file seems OK.

This behaviour is exactly the same on both machines.

Thanks.