[HN Gopher] The zoology and biochemistry of xenomorphs from the ...
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The zoology and biochemistry of xenomorphs from the Alien franchise
Author : zdw
Score : 89 points
Date : 2024-12-02 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (jgeekstudies.org)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The xenomorph's multicellular structure serves as a
| cornerstone for its classification within Animalia (Ros-Rocher et
| al., 2021). Its intricate organization of cells, tissues, and
| organs reflects a level of biological complexity commonly
| associated with animals._
|
| This is already wrong! Animalia is an _Earth_ kingdom, and the
| Xenomorphs clearly aren 't an Earth life-form.
|
| > _Xenomorphs can be included into the Arthropoda phylum due to
| the morphological similarities shared with certain terrestrial
| arthropods such as an exoskeletal structure, a segmented body
| plan, the presence of hemolymph, etc._
|
| Again, no! They're not an Earth life-form. Just because they
| superficially resemble some arthropods in some features doesn't
| make them an arthropod! You might as well say that a _train_ is
| an arthropod - exoskeletal structure, segmented body plan, the
| presence of hemolymph...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > This is already wrong! Animalia is an Earth kingdom, and the
| Xenomorphs clearly aren't an Earth life-form.
|
| Has biology even bothered to come up with a name for that level
| of taxon, or would it be premature? I know that in recent years
| they've been quibbling about both what the top-level (Earth
| top-level) taxon should be, and what the specific ones would
| even be for it, but I've never heard of a scheme that embiggens
| it to alien life. If they ever did so, would there even be the
| same number of sub-taxons for it for any given planet?
|
| And what in the hell do we do if we discover one of those on
| Earth? There's no reason to be certain that life only
| abiogenically manifested once on Earth is there?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
|
| Things evolve into crabs all the time
|
| I don't know if we specially have a word for that form of
| mistake in the tree. I'm under the impression we just fix the
| tree as we go.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >This is already wrong! Animalia is an Earth kingdom, and the
| Xenomorphs clearly aren't an Earth life-form.
|
| Is it if the engineers seeded earth with life?
| Filligree wrote:
| It would have needed to be way back in single-cellular
| prehistory to be compatible with known history. They _still_
| wouldn 't be the same phylum.
|
| Never mind that xenomorphs aren't even carbon-based.
| biofox wrote:
| Depends on your philosophic position on taxonomy. If you wish
| for it to capture inheritance and lineage, then I agree, but it
| is equally valid to view it as a relationship of similarities
| and patterns (similar to design patterns in programming). The
| lineages may have different origins, but if they converge on a
| common pattern, why shouldn't they be grouped together? (if it
| quacks like a duck...)
| tetris11 wrote:
| Also, doesn't the chemical merely mutate the existing DNA, so
| that a phlogeny based on sequence composition would yield
| high consensus for existing organisms (albeit with way higher
| than base rate variants)?
| psychoslave wrote:
| We can definitely group them, but if we want to pretend they
| are the same phylum, that will be a move going against the
| consensual meaning of the term in biology, which clearly
| distinguish analogous structures and homologous structures.
|
| At this point, it's clear that yes we can say whatever
| fantasy we want, but that is not going to instantly override
| the precise preponderant meaning it has gained in the
| community most interested and knowledgeable in the topic.
|
| All that said, I'm not a biologist, and given the honesty I
| show with such a disclaimer, you know you can blindly trust
| me on all the topics I'm barely conscious about, right? So
| trust me xenomorphs are actually adorable cute cuddly pets.
| Don't believe all you see in your nightmarish block busters.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homology_(biology)
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/analogy-vs-homology-1224760
| jhbadger wrote:
| In science fiction you pretty much have to accept either a
| single source of life or amazing convergent evolution. How can
| Vulcans mate successfully with humans in Star Trek, if they
| aren't animals very closely related to _Homo sapiens_? Or the
| humans in Star Wars that lived "long ago in a galaxy far far
| away".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| And in both Star Trek and Star Wars, the answer eventually
| given somewhere in the lore is that a _very_ long time ago
| someone seeded the entire galaxy with (humanoid?) life and it
| _is_ all in a single tree. (See https://memory-
| alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Progenitor and https://starwars.fandom.
| com/wiki/Celestial/Legends#Architect... )
| nine_k wrote:
| Chimps, gorillas, and humans are very close in the genetic
| tree, but cannot cross-breed. For a high level of genetic
| compatibility, constant contact and cross-breeding are
| likely required.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| It is actually not clear whether chimp/human hybrids are
| impossible.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee
|
| It's possible it was actually going to happen if not
| disrupted in China during the cultural revolution
| josefx wrote:
| > and it is all in a single tree
|
| That seems to apply to the Star Trek one, which going by
| the lore seems to be more of an artificially maintained
| rotten stump that had any potential for divergent/adaptive
| growth preemptively cut.
|
| The Star Wars lore you link only seems to talk about
| empires that made contact with multiple species and might
| have helped spread them over a hundred thousand year span.
| It does not seem to mention a single point of origin or an
| artificially crippled evolution that would enforce parallel
| development.
| duped wrote:
| Or you don't have to accept either - authors don't need to
| canonize a theory of biogenesis within the world they build
| to tell compelling story.
|
| "How can Vulcans mate with Humans" doesn't need to be
| explained if the compelling part of the story is "how does
| the child of a human and Vulcan navigate both worlds and what
| does that tell us about ourselves." Of course, you could
| write a story where a shared or divergent
| biological/geological past was a part of the
| metaphor/allegory - but Star Trek doesn't need that.
|
| And if Star Wars replaced the "galaxy" part of that sentence
| with "kingdom" and all the space ships with wooden ones no
| one would even need to ask the question, because Star Wars is
| as much fantasy as science fiction.
|
| There are certainly some creatives who go that far, but I
| personally take issue with the necessity of detail and depth
| in scifi worldbuilding. It's really a recent phenomenon that
| audiences expect so much out of creators and I think it hurts
| the stories we tell.
| philote wrote:
| I think you're missing the entire point of the article. It's
| attempting to classify a fictional, alien species with a real
| taxonomy (the only one we currently have available to us).
|
| And yes, "just because they superficially resemble some
| arthropods in some features doesn't make them an arthropod"..
| but at the very beginning they point out they cannot use DNA
| sequences to help classify, so they are only using known
| physical characteristics.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Oh, I know the point. I'm just engaging in the same kind of
| nerd pedantry!
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| The elephant in the room is it's a silicon organic organism. So
| during parasitic stage it grows basically ex nihilo, and then
| hunts and eats carbon life forms for no reason. It's hollywood
| zoology.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| They don't eat humans generally. They did eat a guy in one of
| the later ones. But the better thought out films don't have
| them doing this. Just killing or paralyzing things and then
| taking them back to the nest.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| There appears to be a misunderstanding in this thread.
|
| The xenomorphs are not silicon-based.
|
| In Alien, Ash (the android) notes that the facehugger
| utilizes utilize silicon-based processes to replace its outer
| layer...he specifically calls out the "interesting
| combination of elements". [1] It wouldn't be necessary to
| call out the use of silicon for the outer layer if the entire
| organism was silicon-based.
|
| Also, it's clear that the xenomorphs utilize carbon-based
| food to grow baby xenos. In Alien, the host complains of
| starving before the baby pops out of his chest. Moreover,
| humans lack sufficient quantities of silicon for a baby xeno
| to grow in a human. In David's lab (Alien: Covenant), David's
| notes and experiments also indicate a duality to the
| creatures, and also that they are not strictly organic
| lifeforms, but are a fusion of organic and non-organic
| life...which is part of his fascination with them.
|
| [1] In the novelization of Alien, Ash goes even further,
| stating that they facehugger is both carbon-based and
| silicon-based.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| > eats [...] for no reason
|
| Honestly, same
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I've never liked "xenomorph" as a name for them. It's like
| calling them "serpentines" if they were snake-shaped or
| "quadrupeds" if they had 4 legs. So-called fandoms really are
| filled with stooges.
|
| Should be something like Gigeroids.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Ahh, but you miss out on the 'cool' aspect embodied by letter
| X, the underlying meaning that effectively refers to the title
| of the movie and other things are likely going over my head.
| Gige prefix does not have the same impact. Alien in fake latin
| sounds a lot better.
| 1986 wrote:
| Greek, not Latin
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Thank you for catching this. Will leave original in place.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, if they used Z instead of X, the Brits would have said
| Zedenomorph and that's just not right in any language
| tivert wrote:
| > Should be something like Gigeroids.
|
| Xenomorph sounds way cooler. That's what's important in a
| movie/toy franchise.
| 0x1ceb00da wrote:
| Xenomorph sounds cooler.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Rule of cool wins again
| dylan604 wrote:
| plus, it's gotta be a killer word score in Scrabble
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But they morph to resemble their hosts?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The "morph" in "xenomorph" as a purely Greek scientific
| jargon construction mostly just means "shape". It is
| interesting in English "morph" as a verb has come to mean
| "change shape", and it is possible the users of the term in
| the franchise do intend that. But technically if that were
| the intended meaning it would be something closer to
| "xenotransmorph".
| ruw1090 wrote:
| The Xenomorph term wasn't created by the fandom. It was first
| used in-universe in "Aliens".
| condour75 wrote:
| But it's based on a misunderstanding. Xenomorph just means
| "alien"-- it wouldn't make any sense for that to be the term
| for that specific alien, because their existence isn't common
| knowledge.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It's just an adjective. It would literally be like calling
| your aliens "humanoids". It describes a shape, literally
| "alien-shaped", probably because all the other animal-shape
| adjectives were inadequate.
| sigzero wrote:
| It doesn't just mean "alien". It's a portmanteau or blend
| word. Only the xeno part means alien. The morph part
| describes its growth process.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It isn't a portmanteau, it's a classic Greek word
| construction (an ordinary expression of classic Greek
| morphology). "Morph" generally just means "shape" as a
| Greek root so "xenomorph" is more accurately "alien-
| shaped". Which gets back to it being a very generic term
| said in a fancy way (like "we don't even know if it is an
| alien, we just know it is alien-shaped"), like much
| technical and scientific jargon will do when it goes to
| constructing Greek words to describe something
| ("gynomorph" => "woman-shaped"; to call to a different
| sci-fi horror Species).
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I agree with this--if I understand you correctly.
|
| In "Aliens", when Hudson (or was it Hicks?) asks, "is this
| another bug hunt?" the lieutenant says, (paraphrasing)
| "there may be a xenomorph involved".
|
| I interpret this to mean that
|
| (a) The marines have previously fought alien creatures of
| some kind (and they had no problem dealing with them).
|
| (b) They used the term "xenomorph" to mean any alien
| creature--not specifically the titular alien, which they
| had never before encountered.
|
| So I agree. Calling it "the Xenomorph" is a
| misunderstanding. At best it's like calling something "the
| Beast", or calling all ships of a certain size
| "dreadnoughts".
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Should be [unpronouceable-mix-of-vowels-and-cosonants], which
| in their language means "actual people" or "true people". That
| seems to be the name of most of the ethnic and cultural groups
| on our planet. There are people (i.e. us) and there are "those
| funny looking weirdos over there" (i.e. them). No reason it
| would be different for space-faring slimy mutant thingies.
| dhosek wrote:
| My favorite of these is the Czech word (and its cognates in
| other Slavic languages) for German, nemec, is derived from
| the word for mute, apparently because on the Slav's first
| contact with Germans, they found their speech so
| incomprehensible as to assume that these strange beings just
| couldn't speak.
| smikhanov wrote:
| Ignoring the content of the paper, could someone comment on this
| referencing style: Thus, the seed of the
| xenomorph, the "black goo" (Chemical A0-3959X.91-15)
|
| What does "Chemical" refers to here?
| will_lam wrote:
| I think it's what it's officially called in the Alien Universe
| smikhanov wrote:
| Ah, so this is _not_ how people doing chemistry refer to
| different chemical elements in their papers. Given the
| overall level of imitation, I thought it 's that.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I think the sequence of sci-fi-like references goes like
| this:
|
| "Chemical A0-3959X.91-15, i.e.
| 42-(acetyloxy)-1-7-0-1-unobtaini-interferon acid, also
| known as "black goo", sold under brand name EcoCola,
| marketed as alternative to NukaCola, is an nano-engineered
| chemical first documented in report A0-3959X, ..."
|
| Or something.
| Ringz wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense. We will need a Zotero plugin for
| this citation style.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| It's like when people say "802.11n"
| asdff wrote:
| In the methods sections they might actually do this with
| what is called a CAS number. This ensures you can order the
| that exact chemical from Sigma Aldrich when you try that
| experiment yourself.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Its not really explained, but in the prequels, the black goo
| seems to be a biological nano-tech like weaponsystem, that
| takes a given lifeform, breaks it down and recreates
| permutations of it that are capable of fast, parasitic
| replication, longterm stasis and accelerated development
| towards a better "attack-vector" life-form.
|
| The whole thing is basically the engineer version of a nuke,
| rendering planets permanently hostile to other life forms and
| destroying civilizations by transporting the weapon inside its
| members - and thus following trade-routes.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I like this take, I'm stealing this as my headcannon. It's
| especially interesting to think of the black goo as able to
| design a parasite specific to the species it comes in contact
| with. And the LV-223 base might be part of a former alien MAD
| deterrence program, similar to an SSBN or a missile silo.
|
| I still have to watch the prequels after "Prometheus", but
| that prequel was one of my favorites in the series, and your
| comment makes me want to go watch them.
| unwind wrote:
| It's "canon" [1]. Autocorrect? :)
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/headcanon
| Terr_ wrote:
| The that reminds me a bit of the "protomolecule" from _The
| Expanse_ , which has a similar meta-algorithmic nature.
| Perhaps moreso, in that it's suggested it relied partly on
| transcendental magic-math where molecules were just a way to
| carry it.
|
| It differs a bit in intent though: Its eldritch designers
| seem to have intended it as a high-reliability remote
| construction drone.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I think it is in the same vein of their extra terrestrial
| cataloguing system as "Alien XX121"
| azangru wrote:
| > The xenomorph's multicellular structure serves as a cornerstone
| for its classification within Animalia (Ros-Rocher et al., 2021).
| Its intricate organization of cells, tissues, and organs reflects
| a level of biological complexity commonly associated with
| animals. Xenomorphs can be included into the Arthropoda phylum
| due to the morphological similarities shared with certain
| terrestrial arthropods such as an exoskeletal structure, a
| segmented body plan, the presence of hemolymph, etc.
|
| I don't understand the logic of this argument. If Xenomorph has
| evolved on a different planet, it will surely not have the same
| common ancestor as Animalia, let alone Arthropoda. Why would
| anyone classify it under those taxons?
|
| P.S.: Ah, I see this has already been commented on:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42297139
| general_error wrote:
| The alien queen does not use its ovipositor to inject eggs into
| people. It's all just some AI slop.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Should we gather the "just to clear it up" statements all in one
| place?
|
| "Xenomorph" is not any sort of official in-universe term for
| these things, though I believe Alien: Romulus at least does have
| scientists calling it "xenomorph <some number>" indicating it has
| been catalogued. Xenomorph is just a generic term for a non-
| humanoid alien, though, what PFC Hudson called a "bug" when the
| term was introduced as Lt Gorman was briefing the other Marines
| about what they might expect. This wasn't their first time
| encountering hostile life and they called a lot of it by this
| name.
|
| The xenomorphs (as fans have taking to calling it) are not
| silicon-based, but rather some blend of organic and inorganic.
| They're bioengineered superweapons, not naturally occurring. As
| far as we can tell, they don't eat at all, at least in their
| adult form, as they grow to full size in a matter of hours
| without us ever seeing them consume anything. They only seem to
| need hosts in their larval form. This is also why they mostly
| don't kill the humans they attack unless they have to because
| they're under threat. They instead attach them to a resin they
| secrete, where they are used as incubators for more larval forms.
| Their entire purpose seems to boil down to multiplying as rapidly
| as possible. I believe Ridley Scott has suggested they consume
| electricity or radiation in general directly, rather than
| extracting energy from food.
|
| They were not actually created by the "engineers," as Shaw from
| Prometheus called the space jockey guys. They were created by
| David, the first synthetic sentient android created by Weyland,
| when he and Shaw hijacked an engineer ship. He returned to their
| home world, released the black goo and killed everything, and
| experiments with its ability to create multistage lifecycle semi-
| organic lifeforms, which he eventually managed to turn into the
| xenomorph as it was seen in the original Alien.
|
| The black goo itself seems to have been some sort of quasi-
| religious experiment thing the engineers developed billions of
| years ago that has the ability to dissolve organic matter, attach
| itself to DNA, and rewrite it to become some kind of more
| "advanced" lifeform. The beginning of Prometheus shows them doing
| this on earth, with a sacrificial engineer dissolving himself
| into primordial water to seed what would eventually become all
| earth life. This doesn't imply earth-life is genetically similar
| to the xenomorph, but rather to the engineers, who were humanoid.
| So Ridley Scott (or Damon Lindelof or whoever) is implying earth
| life was meant to eventually become humanoid all along, like
| we're the ultimate end of an experiment in engineered evolution.
|
| However, back on their home planet, they didn't just stop doing
| new things for four billion years. The black goo of the present
| in Prometheus was similar to the original used to seed earth, but
| seemingly had changed at that point and specifically created more
| xenomorph-like things, now by infecting other lifeforms and
| incubating in them, rather than dissolving them into free-
| floating DNA.
|
| All of that addresses whether xenomorphs are "related" in any
| biological sense to life on earth, but either way, I'm not
| convinced arthropods are the right analogy. The reality of their
| size and movement is obviously confounded by the fact they're
| played by humans wearing costumes, but I'd be surprised if they
| didn't have endoskeletons. Ridley Scott has stated the original
| intention of the creature design was to invoke armor. They're
| insect-like in appearance, but arthropod exoskeletons are not
| really armor. In fact, arthropods very rarely grow as large as
| humans, with the only examples all being extinct, and they had
| paper-thin exoskeletons, in part because molting something that
| large is difficult and expensive. To me, I think they're more
| similar to certain types of dinosaurs with hardened exterior
| armor. That said, they are clearly shown molting, but the fact
| they have claws and teeth seems to suggest they probably also
| have bones. I suspect this is mostly just confusion on the part
| of the designers or the simple fact they aren't really trying to
| make something that is biologically coherent or plausible so much
| as a nightmare made flesh.
|
| I don't think it's ever made clear what the engineers were trying
| to do. The timelines are a little jacked up, but the derelict the
| Prometheus crew discovers can't be the same one discovered later
| by the Nostromo, because the one of the Nostromo has actual
| fully-realized xenomorphs, which the narrative eventually makes
| clear were created by David after the events of Prometheus. The
| derelict in that case was simply carrying black goo, but a
| weaponized version, and carrying it to earth, apparently
| intending to destroy all life there. Why is never explained, nor
| does it seem to be the case that this was some civilization-wide
| decision, since the mission failed and no follow-on was ever
| launched. This could have been some rogue faction that weaponized
| black goo and attempted to destroy life that had earlier been
| created by the non-weaponized older version out of disagreement
| with the larger historical goals of their own people.
|
| Weyland-Yutani corps by the time of the mainline films seems to
| not understand what they are dealing with. They understand they
| have found some substance that can meld with organic life and
| create a stronger version of it that doesn't need food and can
| survive in a vacuum. Romulus seems to suggest that the goal at
| that point was to create a race of hybrid mine workers that would
| survive the harsh conditions better than humans. They don't seem
| to have ever realized that David had created the xenomorphs as
| they existed at that point and his goal was not to create better
| humans but to destroy all other life completely and replace it
| with xenomorphs.
|
| Considering all I've written to this point, I'm amazed at how
| silly the mythology of this series eventually got after starting
| as a simple great horror flick that needed no explanation or
| backstory.
| fractallyte wrote:
| The franchise seems to be playing into some basic human need to
| _explain everything_.
|
| Some things are better left unexplained! There's more mystery
| in mystery.
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