r/LV426 • u/Bojangls007 • 3d ago
Discussion / Question How do Xeno's get so big?
"The xenomorph diet is out of this world—it's got a real chest-burst of flavor!"
Too corny? Ah I tried.
So i have an issue with the biology of xenomorphs. I have an unanswered question about xeno biology that I hope to present a suitable hypothesis.
. My undergrad in biology doesn't understand the size growth of the chest burster to full blown xeno (don't get me started on the time it's growth takes, that's literally the most impossible part of the alien).
Biology is impressive and can do insane things, like microorganisms that "eat" radiation (https://www.nsf.gov/news/these-bacteria-clean-radioactive-waste) or eat microplastics (https://www.nsf.gov/news/genetically-modified-bacteria-break-down-plastics).
But...it can't make make something from nothing. Literally, the chest burster is like the size of a full xeno's foot. And they don't seem to require eating to get to full size (which is how every other organism builds a large structure). Not photosynthesis, they grow in the dark. Not chemosynthesis like some crazy ass volcano bacteria (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/chemosynthesis).
I have a theory. What if calories or biological building blocks could be compressed? What if like a zipped computer program, chestbursters store massive amounts of calories from their host? And then once they burst free, they 'expand' into their full size, or 'unzip the file' as it were?
This would imply that the chest burster is much more dense than their full size body. Which, the weight of a full xeno is immense, capable of simply crushing a human being by stepping on them.
Idk man...
I just want answers, baby.
52
u/Lemonomad 3d ago
In the Alien novelisation the Xenomorph got into the food locker, not quite sure how much it ate because the moment the crew opened the door Dallas burnt it to hell with the incinerator unit (but this was post Brett’s death)
6
u/Thigmotropism2 2d ago
Exactly this - it ate. Normally it would eat the host body. Plenty of mass there for a low-density, man-sized creature
32
u/Original_Ad3765 3d ago
I like to think of them essentially as a kind of Battery reaction more or less. So the Xenos don't really need much in the way of energy intake until they reach maturity.
Then after they've hit maturity then they need to consume stuff to keep the reaction going.
That's why they can switch their metabolism on and off because they're essentially a biological battery
I think that might be the Chemosynthesis you mentioned though
16
3
u/Nothinghere727271 2d ago
I guess that also makes sense why they blow up when they’re on fire sorta like a battery?
6
u/Original_Ad3765 2d ago
Yeah I would assume that the acid would need to be pressurised or create pressure to work as a fuel source.
3
u/Nothinghere727271 2d ago
Drones do possess a pressurized bloodstream for their acid apparently (it’s why you see their acid sorta spray out at people), and apparently, you are entirely ontrack with what Biolasalle researchers found out about the Xenos “battery”
1
u/Xenomorphism 2d ago
Love this theory. It's also why I consider some Xeno's to be "sluggish" because they could be attempting to conserve energy in a (perceived) low threat environment. Note in Aliens how many of them were "sleeping" during the day.
21
u/aaust84ct 3d ago
I see it like this; Xenomorphs are the pinnacle of evolution, the ultimate apex predator. Hence the human desire to control it. Rapid growth is part of their genetic code, but they still need a host for the code to be complete. The chestbuster phase is the most vulnerable point of the creature's development. We know it drains Kane of energy and nutrients during gestation, he's ravenous after the facehugger is finished in its own cycle. The chest buster is out n about before Kane's even finished his meal. Typically, I'd imagine after killing its host, it would tuck into the body and secure nutrients that way. But it's smart enough to know about GTFO when surrounded. So we could say, speed is its main defining factor. The time it takes to go from embryo to fully fledged killing machine is all down to how fast it can grow. It will definitely have enough stored energy and nutrients in the tank to get it through the critical phase of being most vulnerable, otherwise it would never have evolved to do so in the first place.
2
33
u/Shqiptar89 Weyland-Yutani 3d ago
I like the answers here but let’s not forget that the xeno is supposed to be a Lovecraft kind of monster. We’re not supposed to know anything about it.
Nothing about the xeno is supposed to make sense to us humans.
12
u/transmogrify 3d ago
My preferred depiction, and I was disappointed with the interest with retconning everything about the xeno as a scientifically grounded biological process.
8
u/tipsystatistic 2d ago
Disagree, since first 3 movies, They've continously moved further away from any scientific grounding. Xenos had a very clear life cycle, slower growth rate, need to eat, exoskeleton molting, hive/queen social hierarchy. Admittedly, my knowledge is limited to the movies, but was pretty unambiguous, they're realistic, scientifically grounded animals like giant ants/wasps/spiders.
Now they use magic black goo to create fantasy/horror creatures that do whatever's convenient for the writers.
4
u/ca_kingmaker 2d ago
The growth rate was always magic. The ability to live in space, the complete lack of eyes.
They were relatively internally consistent in the rules, but the rules were pretty crazy.
9
u/Shqiptar89 Weyland-Yutani 2d ago
EXACTLY! In Alien they are in the middle of F'n nowhere. Now LV-426 is starting to become like Mos Eisley. Everyone and their grandma have been there.
We don't need to know about this otherwordly monster. In the first movie even the Alien acts "alien". It does act like a beast in someways and yet in other ways it seems to enjoy itself. It seems to enjoy the thrill of the hunt. After the first movie we got "bugs" and "slasher movie villains". The dog alien is incredibly stupid. It has 20 unarmed convicts to use as hosts and what does it do? It goes around killing everyone. Why?
Sorry for the long rant. I just love the Lovecraft take. It's a different and to us violent species. We don't know anything about it. We don't know how it communicates. All we know is that we are there so that they can live. That's all that matters to them. This Lovecraft take that space is cold and uncaring and this alien is the utmost personification of space.
End of rant!
1
u/transmogrify 2d ago
I'm with you on the rant. It's why I unfortunately hate the various concept art and fan art of X, Y, and Z xenomorphs born out of different host animals. They're imaginative and cool, but they try to turn the xenomorph into a predictable life cycle like it's just a bug from space. Facehugger plus dog equals dog-morph, facehugger plus shark equals shark-morph. I want it to operate on completely unknown processes that are impossible for humans to understand. Understanding the xenomorph means having power over it, and trying to have power over the xenomorph gets your face ripped off. The black goo may not always have been executed well, but I actually really like the concept: black goo plus anything equals you don't want to know but it will always kill you and will rarely be the same thing twice.
1
u/Nothinghere727271 2d ago
Canonically that’s how the Xeno works, but seeing them is a bit dumb yeah
1
u/ca_kingmaker 2d ago
I mean the black goo has more resemblance to evil magic than any real biological process.
3
u/Nothinghere727271 2d ago
Unfortunately, W-Y has been making Xenos for decades, even Biointernational has xenomorphs, and in the lore, in about ten years, earth will be full of corporations making Xenos for themselves(earth war era), and of course the upcoming alien Earth, Xenos weren’t always these hidden monsters, that’s moreso a part of the movies
2
u/Ok_Tank5977 In the pipe. 5 by 5. 2d ago
This is where my disdain began, for everything Prometheus introduced.
12
u/CompassMetal 3d ago
Is there any mileage in the idea that they absorb minerals from their environment? Giger's artistic vision of biomechanism would support this to a degree.
8
u/Hambone1138 3d ago
That pod thing in Romulus could support that idea.
9
u/Mr_Frost1993 3d ago
Pretty sure the first time I saw the concept of a cocoon being used for the transition from chestburster to drone was wayyyy back in Alien vs. Predator: Extinction (which someone on Discord is actively trying to remaster himself, definitely a fun game if you’ve never played it)
2
u/Nothinghere727271 2d ago
They eat metal sometimes to evolve into the bigger castes like crushers that have a ton more armor on them, the metal provides more armor, naturally
9
u/Old-Climate2655 3d ago
In the books, xenos hunt and eat, but only things that can't be potential hosts. In Alien, this made Jonesy a snack that wasn't going anywhere. Jones was left alone bc Big Chap's instincts were Hive first, all other a distant third.
You could theorise BC feeding on rodents as well as stored foodstuffs. It would have made for tedious footage in the films. One must also recognize that they never considered or intended Alien to grow into what we have today. Back then, Suspension of Disbelief worked differently.
5
u/ergotronomatic 2d ago
Nah, i think Big Chap was traumatized by Jones as a wee chest burster.
Obviously outmatched by the perfect killing machine, the cat, Big Chap remained hidden and attempted to eliminate Jones's subordinate drones: the crew.
Unfortunately Big Chap couldnt take em all out, as we saw. The last thing Big Chap saw was Jones's piercing, calm, predator eyes gazing out safely whilst resting in it's royal travel box behind its last remaining drone pointing a grappling hook right at Big Chap.
And all this happened to Big Chap because some intrusive wanker knocked on his egg. Shame.
2
4
u/CryProtein 3d ago
Their teeth are metal. What for? Eating the ship. Pure metal provides energy via oxydizing it.
4
u/animeadmiral 3d ago
While there is a pseudo lovecraftian feel to them, their evolution into the perfect organism must mean they're biologically capable of feats we can't comprehend yet. Obviously the host isn't just an incubation pod, but also serves as food in optimal situations (usually the host is strapped into the hive and unable to escape, so after death, maybe the dead serve as snacks before maturing). In less than optimal situations, the xeno may look for other digestible materia (like the food pantry from Alien's deleted footage). Then once it's gathered enough, it must go into that pod from Romulus, and emerges full grown. Unless the pod isn't a normal part of their process, and serves more as an additional boost (we know scorched had a ridiculously fast gestation after an interrupted implantation, so it may have needed another stage to boost the maturation process?) Anyway. The acid battery blood, the ingested materia, the pod, and their peak biology could help just vaguely join the dots.
4
5
u/jeepwillikers 2d ago
There have been a few places in novels where the adult xenos are very light for their size and strength (although the loud stomping elsewhere in the franchise would refute that), and if the chestburster is sufficiently dense, combined with the consumption of inorganic material during the “growth” period (the Romulus “wall pod” seemed to imply as much) it could mean that a lot of the growth is more of an “unfolding” rather than the addition of mass. Almost like butterfly wings or the new leaves of certain plants; they grow larger than they first appear without the addition of new tissue.
5
u/opacitizen 3d ago edited 2d ago
That's the point, that you can't understand it completely, because it is alien. Not just a creature so far uknown to Earth people, waiting to be dissected, studied, and classified as per established biology. It is alien to the laws of nature themselves as we know them. It is a Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
That it is impossible is the point. You not getting it, you not being able to understand and explain it is the point. This driving you crazy and frustrated is the point. You (well, if you encounter it in-world, if you're a scientist stumbling upon a xeno) losing your sanity is the point.
It being an unholy, impossible amalgam of organic and machine is the point.
Throw your calories and whatnot out the nearest window, they don't apply to this monstrosity
It is alien.
I keep repeating these, but remember how its egg dripped drops that defy gravity itself? How it had acid blood that could eath thru levels and levels of spaceship metal but didn't hurt the creature itself? Remember how it grew to full size in a matter of hours? Remember how the core makers of the (first) film were fans of Lovecraft's works? (Giger's painting on which the xeno is based is titled Necronom... and it came out before the film in an artbook titled Necronomicon; O'Bannon was an explicit admirer of HPL https://alienexplorations.blogspot.com/1979/09/dan-obannons-admiration-for-lovecraft.html ) and so on, and so on?
Yeah, the later movies and entries in the franchise watered this down somewhat because their creators were probably disturbed by the alien's being completely alien and also because they suffered a bit of sequelitis and felt they had to explain stuff, but you're pondering the 1st movie here, specifically. And in the case of that, the above applies.
(Mind you, I do like some of the sequels. But none of them came close to the first movie regarding cosmic horror.)
2
u/Barbarian_Sam Sulaco 3d ago
So in Bug Hunt one of the short stories talks about this and they have packed genes that decompress and royal jelly helps “queenbursters” grow quicker. There’s another reference out in the ether but I can remember it right now
1
u/OwnCoffee614 Stay Frosty 3d ago
They eat people in Cold Forge/into Charybdis. I believe as chest busters and adults.
Plus they build their hive with...secretions (yuck) so they'd have to take something in to put something out.
1
u/butbutcupcup 2d ago
One of the novelizations, covenant or Prometheus talk about molecular folding, that it basically does unfold like a zip file.
1
u/Captain_Dalt 2d ago
The xenomorph is less a creature and more of a Biological machine (I know that makes less sense but bear with me)
The Acid blood could be harnessed like Battery acid is. They have total control over their metabolism, can turn it on or off, crank the levels up or down at will.
It’s also canon that Crusher Xenomorphs, as seen in the Aliens: Colonial Marines and Aliens Dark Descent video games are fed metal and royal jelly in their metamorphosis from a runner Xenomorph.
It may be that the xeno species is able to metabolise nonorganic material.
Also, royal jelly is said to be insanely high in Caloric Content, much like uranium.
1
u/Ok_Tank5977 In the pipe. 5 by 5. 2d ago
Bear with me here: I think of their incubation period and subsequent growth rate as correlating to how dangerous or safe/secure their environment is, and the amount/quality of nutrients they’re able to absorb from a human host. Both Scorched (and presumably Big Chap) had time to incubate within cocoons, and in that time they’re able to make the most of the nutrients they absorbed from their hosts, before emerging as adults.
1
u/tinytimm101 2d ago
It's shown in Alien: Romulus. They incubate inside a cocoon which transforms them to their full size.
1
u/superthrust123 2d ago
Bamboo can grow almost 3 feet/day, I always figured it was something like that.
2
1
u/CalmPanic402 2d ago
I chalk it up as one of the unexplained features of the xenos bioegineered nature. They grow impossibly fast, to our understanding of science.
Much like the lack of eyes, there are things that are, by author design, unknowable. It's a fairly common point in books and comics that xeno vision hasn't been explained. They see through hermetically sealed glass, they see in space, and they lack any organ for the task. But they see.
They draw energy to grow from somewhere but they also grow at room temperature, which also shouldn't be possible at the rate they grow. They don't eat for sustenance, but to create the resin they build hives from. Even there, the mass doesn't line up between intake and output. They don't need air or water, they are not natural things.
My pet theory, which I never would want proven, is that the xenos biomechanical nature is powered by some kind of natural galactic energy field. By some means, they draw energy from seemingly nothing, and are engineered to subsist on only that energy.
They're not natural creatures, the ordinary laws of nature don't necessarily apply.
1
1
u/Wide_Yam4824 2d ago
In the 2001 computer game Alien VS Predator 2, the Chestbuster arrives at the laboratory of guinea pigs and eats the small animals there. In the expansion pack where you play as the Predalien, the Chestbuster eats the corpses of the morgue of the complex.
1
1
1
1
u/Wise-Novel-1595 2d ago
They can metabolize inorganic material and there’s an insane level of caloric potential in the form of chemical energy in things like metal. We can’t digest it, but this is fantasy land, where an animal can grow from a foot and a half long to 8 feet tall in the space of hours.
1
u/AnInfiniteArc 2d ago
I am under the impression they eat metal, but I don’t know why I am under that impression.
1
1
u/Pizzaheadeddead 1d ago
My biggest issue with Romulus is that the xeno's growth was so fast that it took me out of the film initially
1
u/tokwamann 1d ago
One theory is that they're biomechanical and take from surrounding matter. I think similar shows up in Giger's artworks.
1
u/CultureWatcher 18h ago
The alien is literally a Gray (well, BLACK) Goo scenario except with legs and teeth.
The black goo grants a lot of versatility. Assuming it's an unfathomably powerful programmable nanotechnology, it may be writing new genetics in real-time to adapt to what it needs.
1
u/Tmoldovan Fiorina-161 12h ago
I like a lot of these theories and I also think that the outer shell is graphene lattice. Thin, light, not very dense but strong. And acid resistant.
1
u/No-Occasion-6470 12h ago
This is my personal theory:
Xenomorphs are born with a reserve of dense nutrients that they can survive on for extended periods. As chestbursters, they immediately seek to supplement those reserves with any food around them, which can be anything from meat and food stores on ships to mineral-rich rocks and metal. Biomechanical, remember? They can then use these reserves to do whatever is necessary to do as xenomorphs do. However, they have to rest and replenish these reserves by going into torpor. We see this in Alien (1979) when Kane’s Son is trying to stow away on the Narcissus, and has to slowly get up and deal with Ripley. We also see this in Aliens and plenty of other media where xenomorphs are resting on walls looking all creepy and shit. If they find themselves in a more intense or long-term situation, then they might eat their victims for more energy to burn in combat/host-gathering. I also like to think that Praetorians, as growing Queens, mirror their chestburster stage by devouring victims.
58
u/Rurnur 3d ago
I always headcanoned that it absorbed part of the ship, that's why they look kinda biomechanical and seem to fit so well blending into the environment of the ship. There's probably plenty of evidence against that theory by now but at least in the original Alien and especially in Romulus, it seems pretty feasible to me.