Alien life cycle

Actually reading is better. If you go to Anchorpoint Essays theres some good info in there on the Xeno's and its life cycle.

I actually find the anchorpoint essays overblown and too theoretical myself.

Heres my version of the Aliens life cycle... [i]Originally, the hierarchy of the Xenomorph was composed of infertile (Warriors) and fertile females (Queens). Directly implanted into hosts by immature fertile females (Princesses), infertile females, once matured, constructed a hive using secretions from their mouths, faeces and the remains of exhausted hosts. Once the hive was complete and securely guarded by the infertile females the immature fertile female would cocoon her in resin and develop into her mature form. Fully-grown the fertile female laid eggs from an ovipositor, each egg incubating an embryo-carrying parasite (Facehugger/Royal Facehugger). After many generations of extracting genetic information from hosts, the Xenomorph evolved, introducing the male Y chromosome into the genome of the embryo of the infertile females giving rise to the more aggressive infertile males (Drones)[/i].

Watched the preview again.arethey running from as crashing ship or are they running from immenintdestruction?

I've always liked the original ideal that eggs were made from human hosts. Seems more Giger-ish

This idea could still be used, as a way to sire a Queen and thus increase the creatures numbers.

There'a great one on Wikkipedia.

I like to think that the Xeno life cycle depends on the pecies of host in which it gestates. We (to this point) have only seen SJ and Human strains of Xeno. I get the feeling we are about to learn a whole lot more in Prometheus... Perhaps the Xeno lifeform in its pure form can change and alter itself depending on the environment, host and atmosphere. As Ash said, a perfect organism.

Oh I forgot about the travesty in AVPr (Predalien)....

After watching Ridley Scott's "Director's Cut" of Alien, I can't help but prefer the original idea that the eggs were made from human hosts. Considering the popular theory that the aliens were genetically engineered by the Space Jockeys to be bio-weapons, it makes much more sense for them to be able to reproduce asexually. Think of it this way: a single alien, or what we now know as a "drone", converts its victims into eggs. These hatch more facehuggers, which then impregnate more hosts, which then birth more aliens, which then convert more victims into eggs, repeating the cycle in an ever-widening circle. This allows a drone to devastate an entire population. If a drone, like the one in the original film, is unable to reproduce on its own, it isn't much of a threat to a population. In other words, the queen actually hurts the aliens' overall effectiveness as bio-weapons. I'm interested to see whether Ridley Scott resurrects this idea in Prometheus, or whether he tries to reconcile it with the other films in the series. If I recall correctly, he considers only the original film to be canon.

True Vincent. I just remembered while reading your thread. In the last AVP video game, theres a cut scene where once the queen is killed, all of her drones basically seem to feel it telepathically. One of the drones then goes on to a new growth stage and becomes an egg layer. Could it be that all drones have the capibitily of becoming a queen, given extended age, and without the presence of another Queen? We must remember that we have only seen two Queeens (I dont count the travesty in AVPr or 4 as Queens) In Aliens, the queen is a few months old, in AVP the Queen is possibly thousands of years old. Perhaps once an Alien reaches a certain age it has the capabiltiy of growing into a Queen. Before this perhaps it has the option to use the cocoon process. I do like both ideas in Alien and Aliens. The Queen is such a powerful creation it seems difficult to imagine the Alien series without her... I guess if the Xenos are "perfect organisms" then perhpas they have multiple ways of creating eggs when needs be...

@vincent I totally agree. If an alien solely killed/gathered a host to transform it into an egg, once it kills everything and can't produce anymore eggs, it's possible that they'd eventually die off and leave the area vacant. I find this totally plausible because with the instance of the alien appearing to "eat" one of the prisoners in Alien 3 (maybe it's just mauling the body out of rage), it never seems to do anything to sustain it's own life. It bites out the frontal lobe of the brain, I guess lobotomizing the potential host, to make it easier to subdue so that it can do whatever the hell it does to initiate the transformation of the victim into an egg. Ridley said he likes to think that it has a very short lifespan and veronica cartwright said something about how it grows so fast that it's constantly bruising, explaining it's coloration. Grow fast, kill fast, die fast, take over whats left.

Ridley did say that he always envisioned the derelict ship as a bomber with the sole purpose of delivering the eggs as a weapon.