Xeno question

Actually I think someone else asked this awhile back to be honest........... Ummmmm.......Lemme take a stab in the dark m'here............. Know how your mouth waters when you smell something good cooking? Maybe they are constantly smelling good food (people, or anything organic) so they are always drooling excessively because they are never satisfied? :-P

My theory would be cooling. Allegedly the Alien has a short life span (some say 4 days), that combined with the ability to grow from a Chestburster to an Adult in a very short time chronologically makes me suspect that the Alien has an extremely high metabolism. Yet, in Aliens they did not show up on the Colonial Marines' infrared scopes, which means that externally their bodies are equal to that of their surroundings, so therefore I would presume that they are constantly drooling and dripping and secreting to cool their bodies.

Snorkelbottom.... does sound like a very clever and intricate answer. Thanks guys for the input.

[quote]extremely high metabolism[/quote] I have one of those...I can eat 3 BBQ Steaks in one sitting, and I don't mean little baby steaks...I mean 2 Ribs and a Striploin, in one sitting, and lose 5 pounds from it. I start sweating it all off somewhere around the midpoint on the 2nd steak. LMFAO...but true. I played a lot of organized sports as a kid and some semi pro hockey so maybe that's why I got this afliction...guess I'm part XENO... [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1cof.jpg[/img]

well i think that the drool is waht the xenos use to cocon people on the walls

First of all, hello everybody, I am one of those lurkers who has been a website aficionado for almost a year but never got around to signing up! Your father's question is one that always bothered me, from the very moment I quit looking at Alien as pure entertainment and tried to also make sense of what I could see. This also shows my degree of geekness and devotion to the series. Another thing that bugs me is that in fact we never see it/them eat, yet they manage to grow bigger than a man. The chestburster is a very small creature (about the size of a rat) and in a few hours it turn into a fully grown adult. The fact that their metabolism is very fast is granted, but one thing is missing: the mass. Where does all that mass come from? I am sure nobody while filming thought about this, because it's all about the story and the mood, and it is therefore irrelevant. But they also didn't know that a host of over-analysing fans would have dissected their work in the following decades! The possibilities would be: -the alien actually eats everything it finds (being a really biomechanical creature it would also feed on metal and other inorganic material) - Ash refers to its nutritional requirements but we don't (need to) know anything else -the chestburster already contains all the mass within itself from birth. This wouldn't make sense, because the question would remain. And furthermore, if we assume the alien to be the same density of a human being, the chestburster would weigh at least 80-100kg, and I couldn't imagine somebody having a small ball weighing that much in his chest and not noticing! -the alien is actually very light, possibly an air balloon(!), with a very very thin skin. But then it could be very fragile, and most definitely wouldn't be as strong as depicted (holding Parker like that? No way!) -it actually creates mass out of nowhere. Then, I am sorry for mr Weyland, but no, "They are the gods now", not us! I know this is particularly geeky, but what's your opinion? :P

First of all hello everybody, I am one of those forum lurkers who has been an aficionado to this website for almost a year but never got around to signing up. I have always been a fan of the Alien saga, and I realized how geeky I am when I started analysing it beyond its pure entertainment value. And the question concerning the alien's drool is one of those analyses: where does it come from? But there's a more general question which has always bugged me. How/what/when do the aliens eat? I know this was not important for the authors, and it is irrelevant to the story and its mood, so it's more about pointless discussions between us fans! Ash refers to its "nutritional requirements" but nothing else is explained. The chestburster turns into a fully grown adult in a few hours. It surely has a very fast metabolism, but where does all the mass that forms its body come from? The possibilities are: -it feeds on anything: not just organic matter, food, Brett, braaaainsssss, whatever: but also inorganic matter (metal and all the hardware the Nostromo is made of). This would justify to some extent its biomechanical nature (sadly lost in the following chapters). -it has all the mass there already. If we consider the adult to be the same density of a human being, then the chestburster would be weighing like an adult man. Could you imagine poor Kane having something the size of a rat and the weigh of a man inside his chest and not noticing? It doesn't work even with lower densities, because it would be still something heavy on his chest (literally!) -there is no additional mass: that means that the adult alien weighs as the chestburster, making it some kind of air balloon, with a very thin skin, therefore very fragile. On top of that it wouldn't be as strong as depicted (holding Parker like that? No way!). -it creates mass out of nowhere. In that case I'm sorry for Mr Weyland but no, They are the gods now! So my take is that they have a very varied menu! What's your opinion? Too geeky? :D

It would also be interesting to see the alien actually going through ( the extremely short) process of growing from the chest burster to the adult. It would also be cool if they experimented with the face hugger attacking different species...

If it doesn't eat as other animals, then what are the teeth and claws for? Not bashing the ideas, just wondering. Ash refers to it as great survivor, so maybe it draws its mass from multiple sources. Reptiles that hibernate under water draw oxygen directly from the water, as they need air to breathe. Maybe the zeno also does this with nutrients from it's surroundings when it needs to. Sounds plausible to me. The original alien killed people, so it stands to reason it ate them when it needed it. In Alien 3, the zeno most definitely ate people.

Im interested in what a pure zeno looks like. No human dna no dog. Pure. We only have those two except preditor. Would be intersesting to take a pure image and morph with other creatures

Surely the only pure Xeno is the facehugger.