- Today's episode of Because Science
is sponsored by Mack Weldon.
Oh, hello.
I just took off my helmet, even though I'm
about to encounter the first
extraterrestrial life forms
because I'm a bad scientist.
But I can't help it,
these xenomorph things
are too interesting,
too complicated, too ...
Unnecessarily convoluted,
I have to study them
up close and personal.
What is their life cycle?
What the heck is the black goo?
How do xenomorphs really work?
For the last 40 years, since
the original Alien came out,
fans have speculated about
how the iconic monsters work.
Their has to be some science
in the science fiction, right?
But fans have always argued
because the Alien franchise
is intentionally vague about
biology and life cycles.
The movies want you to be in the dark
to heighten the horror.
However, the movies sometimes
feel downright contradictory,
so how do the xenomorphs work?
I think I've figured it out,
yes, even with Prometheus.
In the first Alien, and even Aliens,
the life cycle of the xenomorph
isn't all that complicated
if you know where the
filmmakers were coming from.
According to screenwriter Dan O'Bannon
in an essay entitled Something
Perfectly Disgusting,
"I patterned the alien's
life cycle on real parasites.
"Parasitic wasps treat caterpillars
"in an altogether revolting
manner, the study of which
"I commend to anyone who is
tired of having good dreams."
You're tired of having good dreams, right?
This is Cortesia
Glomerata, a parasitic wasp
that parisitizes caterpillars.
It does so by laying eggs inside of
the caterpillar's body, which
eat them from the inside out
and eventually bug-burst
from their bodies,
wherever their chest may be,
after a gestation period.
Look familiar?
(whooshing)
Whoa!
Nice try, loser.
Both co-writer Ronald Shusett
and director Ridley Scott
have been quoted as saying
that parasitic wasps
inspired the life cycle
of the original alien.
You're tired of having good dreams, right?
This is Rhyssa Persuasoria,
which Ridley Scott
mentioned in an interview.
It crawls along wood, finds
a grub underneath that wood,
drills into the wood
with its butt, and then
inserts eggs into the grub
which then hatch into larvae
which eat the grub from the inside out,
muscles first, vital organs last.
This is the Tarantula Hawk Wasp,
which Shusett has mentioned in interviews.
It paralyzes a spider, leads it to a den
and then leys an egg on its
abdomen which then hatches
into a larvae and burrows into the spider,
eating it from the inside
out, muscles first,
vital organs last, and then eventually
emerges as an adult animal.
Sounds just like an alien incapacitating
a human for a facehugger, doesn't it?
(gooey chomping sounds)
With this inspiration, O'Bannon said that,
wait, where's the ...
O'Bannon said that, "These
alien beings had two sexes
on their own, but they needed
a third animal to reproduce,
so they bring in an
animal, put it up next to
a facehugger, or spore, and then wham,
they lead the inseminated animal off to
an enclosure somewhere
to await the birth."
This is more or less exactly
what parasitic wasps do.
They fertilize each other
first but need a third animal
to complete the life cycle, so ...
This is the classic xenomorph life cycle.
Humans stumble upon a
long-dead race of parasite
that died out before they could get their
last fertilized eggs hosts,
but then humans arrive
and the eggs activate and
then a embryo delivery device
or face ...
Facehugger, attaches to a
human and implants an embryo
inside that human and
after a gestation period,
the embryo bursts forth from the chest,
eventually growing into
a full-grown xenomorph.
Xenomorph has to find another
mate to continue this process,
but this is the gist of it.
Parasitic wasps don't have queens,
but James Cameron's addition of one
doesn't really change anything, it just--
(growling)
ugh, it just adds a step.
The black goo, though, that
makes things complicated.
The film Prometheus introduces
a number of distinct-looking
creatures, but they are
all linked by the goo.
We see goo-sposure lead to everything from
the hammerpedes, to the
trilobite, to the deacon alien,
and finally to a zombie guy?
How the heck does the
original xenomorph life cycle
fit into any of this?
According to the movie,
the goo is actually
Chemical A03959X.91-15, or a
so-called genetic accelerant.
Now it's my theory, and
many others', that this
genetic accelerant takes
whatever biology it finds
and weaponizes it.
It takes any living thing,
and through a genetic process,
makes it more xenomorph-y, depending on
the genetics it's working with.
I mean really, the first
alien you see and it
looks like a vagina snake, and you wanna
take off your helmet and touch it?
That's just--
No dude, that's just your fault.
You're bad at your job.
So the goo takes Holloway's
sperm and transforms it
into the trilobite, which in
turn infects the engineer,
which becomes the deacon alien.
The goo also infects some
native worms on LV-223
and makes them a lot
more hostile and acidy.
The hammerpedes.
But what about that zombie guy?
Well, in a deleted scene from Prometheus,
he was initially supposed
to be a lot more like
a xenomorph-human hybrid or transforming
into a xenomorph himself.
This only goes to show that
this is what the goo does.
It takes living things and gives them
xenomorph-like qualities.
But how does the black goo
take biology and weaponize it?
And how does that fit into
the xenomorph life cycle
as we know it and the
original Alien franchise?
I've been calling the
Alien aliens xenomorphs
this whole time, which
implies that they are
a singular species, so
how can there be so many
different animals in all these movies?
That's because xenomorph
is not a species name,
it's a description.
"Xenomorph" means "strange form."
The classic xenomorph
that we're used to, then,
is simply just the strange forms that
the goo gives to humans,
just like the hammerpede
is the strange form given
to the worms on LV-223.
If all his is the case, than the goo,
filled with microorganisms
or viruses or nanomachines,
or whatever, could be a vector for
intense and specific
horizontal gene transfer,
which is the transfer of genetic material
between organisms and
not between generations,
like the gene transfer that created you.
This genetic accelerant then, more or less
attacks hosts' cells and inserts
genetic material into them.
Those cells take up the new
material and express those genes
and change the entire
organism as a result.
We see this most frequently
happening in bacteria,
which can share genetic material to become
antibiotic-resistant, for
example, but in this case,
the goo could share xenomorph-like genes
with any organism to make them more ...
Alien.
But where does the dog alien
from Alien Cubed fit in?
It doesn't.
That movie's bad.
So where does all of this
leave the alien life cycle,
including the goo?
(exhales)
Alright, so, from the
original movie we know that
a xenomorph needs to interact
with another xenomorph
to fertilize an egg and
further on the strange forms,
so first the goo has to
interact with a human
and then the human
transforms into a xenomorph
and with another xenomorph,
that fertilizes an egg
with the embryo transfer device, the f--
(whooshing)
the facehugger inside,
which interacts with a human
which then becomes a xenomorph
after the chest bursting,
which, one of them could split
off and become the queen.
The goo also attempts to do the same thing
with human sperm, forming the trilobite,
which interacts with the engineer,
which interacts to form the
deacon, after some bursting
as well, and the goo also
interacts with the worms
on LV-223, and then becomes (panting)
the hammerpede, and all this can happen
via horizontal gene transfer,
and that all makes sense
except, only the strange
form of the human and the goo
will produce the classic xenomorph
that you're familiar with.
So what is the true xenomorph life cycle?
Well it all started with humans that were
exposed to a bio-weapon
that became a strange form
of a parasite that needed
a third party to reproduce
just like a parasitic
wasp and all that was
via a process known as
horizontal gene transfer.
(panting)
Of course, everything
would have been a lot more
straightforward and
sensical if Ridley Scott
had stuck to his original vision, but hey,
life, even fictional life, is complicated.
Because--
(choking)
Because ...
Ooh!
Thank you so much for watching.
Make sure to follow me
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So go do it, and ask me questions.
Don't at me.
You can at me.
And a special thanks
to this week's sponsor,
Mack Weldon, makers of premium
underwear, workout wear,
hoodies, outerwear.
They are super high-quality,
which I appreciate
because I have extreme skin sensitivities.
I can tell if all my hairs on my body are
in the same direction or
not, so when it comes to
buying stuff that fits well
and feels good on your skin,
I take it super, super
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it was super easy, and
now if you have the same
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using the promo code SCIENCE.
Hey, you're a human with skin.
Be comfortable in it, and if
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Promo code SCIENCE, Mack Weldon.
Have you ever seen the
tagline for Alien 3?
Which is actually Alien Cubed.
Right, they wrote it like this.
Write it like this, like that.
And the tagline, they say.
"Three times the horror, three
times the scares and stuff."
They say three times, but this is cubed,
so the only way for that to be true
is if the original Alien
had only 1.733 horror.
Like, that was the value of horror.
Then if you cube this, then it's gonna be
three times the original value.
