Hello class I'm Professor Azmin. Today you will learn about the xenomorph a highly dangerous alien species.
The xenomorph (also known as a Xenomorph XX121 or Internecivus raptus, and simply the alien or the creature[a])[1][2][3][4] is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that serves as the title antagonist of the Alien and Alien vs. Predator franchises. The species made its debut in the film Alien (1979) and reappeared in the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997), and Alien: Romulus (2024). The species returns in the prequel series, first with a predecessor in Prometheus (2012) and a further evolved form in Alien: Covenant (2017).[5] It also featured in the crossover films Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), with the skull and tail of one of the creatures respectively appearing briefly in Predator 2 (1990) and The Predator (2018), as a protagonist (named 6) in the video game Aliens vs. Predator (2010), and will return in the upcoming FX television series Alien (TBA). In addition, the xenomorph appears in various literature and video game spin-offs from the franchises.
carapace would be used again in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, although made narrower with a longer muzzle and more prominent chin. This design would be kept in Alien versus Predator,[19] and abandoned in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in favor of the ribbed design.
Throughout their appearances, human-spawned Aliens have been shown to have different numbers of fingers. In Alien, the creature has webbed, six-fingered hands. In Aliens, the number of fingers is reduced to three, with two "paired" and a single, opposable thumb. The fingers are also shown to be much longer and more skeletal. In Alien Resurrection, the number of digits is increased to four, with two long middle fingers and a pair of thumbs. This design is kept in the Alien vs. Predator films, though the hands were made bulkier in order to make the Aliens seem more formidable against the Predators.[20]
Aliens have been alternatively portrayed as both plantigrade and digitigrade organisms, usually relative to their hosts. Human-spawned Aliens were usually portrayed as having humanoid hind limbs, while in Alien 3 the featured Alien sported double-jointed legs due to its quadrupedal host. This characteristic would be continued in Alien Resurrection for the human-spawned Aliens. Tom Woodruff, who had previously played the "dog-alien" in Alien 3, described the human-spawned Aliens in Resurrection as feeling more like a dog than the previous creature, despite having been born from human hosts.[21] The human-spawned Alien warriors would revert to a plantigrade posture in Alien vs. Predator.
Life cycle
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Aliens are eusocial life-forms with a caste system ruled over by a queen.[3][11][25] Their life cycle comprises several distinct stages: they begin their lives as an egg, which hatches a parasitoid larval form known as a facehugger, which then attaches itself to a living host by, as its name suggests, latching onto its face. In the Alien 3 novelization, Ripley commented that this parasitoid would probably be able to use any host from as small as a cat, to as large as an Asian elephant.
The facehugger then "impregnates" the host with an embryo, known as a "chestburster",[NB 2] which, after a period of gestation, erupts violently from the host's chest, resulting in the death of the host. The chestburster then matures to an adult phase, shedding its skin and replacing its cells with polarized silicon.
Due to horizontal gene transfer during the gestation period, the Alien also takes on some of the basic physical attributes of the host from which it was born (something noticed by Ripley in Alien 3, when the xenomorph plaguing the complex moved on four limbs, having gestated within a Quadruped; a dog in the theatrical release, and an ox in the director's cut; whereas all the others she had previously seen had gestated within Humans/Bipeds), allowing the individual alien to adapt to the host's environment (breathe the air, etc.). This is also shown in the two live-action crossover films, Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), where an embryo, having gestated within a Predator/Yautja, displayed Predator/Yautja physical traits (arthropod-like mandibles) from eruption onwards.
This process of horizontal gene transfer is also shown to be two-way; in Alien Resurrection (film & novelization), Ellen Ripley's clone, Ripley-8, is shown exhibiting numerous xenomorph characteristics, physical and behavioural; this is touched more upon in the novelization (chapter 4), where it is described that, when a host is infested with an xenomorph embryo, it does not just infest the host like a parasite, but also like a virus, "a major breakthrough in adaptive evolution ... a way to guarantee that any host, any host at all, would provide whatever it was the developing embryo needed, even if/when the host's body was inadequate."
The adult phase of the Alien is known by various different names. The adult Aliens have been referred to as "drones", "warriors", "workers", and sometimes "soldiers", similar to the way ants have been defined. The names of the adult phase have also been used to name different types of adult phases of the Alien in numerous sources, including video games, comic books, novels, and the films, but only in the commentaries by the team who created the films. No official name has been given to the adult stage of the Alien in the films themselves.
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