Fantasy-biology-ish: how do you feel about the Xenomorphs of the Alien/s franchise? How would you tweak them, hypothetically?
Pre-pandemic, some friends were very patiently introducing me to pop culture movies that everybody should have seen, because I simply hadn’t. So I’d only seen the first Alien movie 3 or 4 years ago. It was quite well crafted and enjoyable, though there’s a lot of biology missing. There is probably also a lot of their biology that I haven’t seen so it’s hard to have a detailed comment.
But the most apparent thing to me is that this is a species which is not in the ecosystem to which is belongs. It has an egg stage, a transport stage, a parasitic larval stage, an ambulatory predatory stage. Other than that last part, they remind me a lot of tapeworms, actually.
And the thing about parasites is their form and function is developed in response to the species which they parasitise. Now there is a lot of leeway because the xenomorphs (a name which just means ‘alien shape’, I mean, how’s that for creativity) change a bit depending on what they’re parasitising or predating, but that basic lifecycle pattern is there.
So the first thing I would do is look at giving them the rest of their ecology. Needing a host for your larvae that paralyses, suffocates and kills them is great for a horror movie, but really inefficient in a biological system. A nest had, let’s say, 200 eggs in it. You need to find 200 seperate hosts for those face huggers? That’s difficult.
So instead imagine a different species, a very large herbivore or opportunistic omnivore. And I mean something the size of a small house which is coated in segments, and each of those segments has part of a respiratory system (think about how insects have multiple breathing holes along their body). The host comes across a nest of xenomorph eggs, or possibly seeks it out because hey, free protein, the vibrations from the presence of the massive organism cause the eggs to hatch, and the eggs/facehuggers that don’t get quickly eaten attach themselves to some of the various respiratory pores that the host creature had, anaesthetising the local tissue so that host doesn’t know, in that sneaky way a lot of parasites do. So you start with 200 eggs but maybe only 20 attach, and that’s plenty.
Now eventually the larvae, aka chest burster, is going to aggravate that host’s tissues enough to be a problem. But if the host is segmented, and it just walls it off, allowing access only to that segment and not the whole host, then the xenomorph can still develop without killing that host, and once it has developed and popped out it needs to leave very quickly to get out of the way of the massive creature. Then it sheds, has a predatory adult lifestyle, etc.
I would have other species in their ecology too, but adults predate different species to what their young and larvae need to grow, I. Order to spread their demands through the ecological web.
So mostly I feel like the xenomorphs are just kind of displaced. They’re doing their best, but they don’t belong where they are, and who’s fault is that?
Oh my goodness, they’re feral cats.
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
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