Question about the Aliens "head punch" attack...

[BigDaddyJohn]

The thing gotta eat.

[Ripper Rex]

Where? The gutted bodies were left to rot in their nests after death. I didn't see any evidence of them being gnawed on. There was more evidence of thievery (the missing shoelaces).

Some were down to the bone in just a few weeks. Something ate them.

I like the idea it was the hive itself, personally.

What would be messed up would be if the Xenos were taking bits and pieces of the dead colonists and trying to force feed the cocooned but still alive ones to keep them alive. 

[SiL]

Where? The gutted bodies were left to rot in their nests after death. I didn't see any evidence of them being gnawed on. There was more evidence of thievery (the missing shoelaces).

Some were down to the bone in just a few weeks. Something ate them.

I like the idea it was the hive itself, personally.

What would be messed up would be if the Xenos were taking bits and pieces of the dead colonists and trying to force feed the cocooned but still alive ones to keep them alive. 

They're not cocooned that long.

[SM]

Yeah they'll be bursted long before they starve.

[Oasis Nadrama]

I still like the idea of xenos force-feeding human flesh or other disgusting things to the hosts. Very Aliens: Labyrinth, very tasty.

However, you can definitely have your cake and eat it, too! From Alien 3, we know that the gestation period for a queen chestburster is longer, and that the host has the time and need to take multiple meals. Just force-feed royal hosts.

It would also be a good explanation of why the Aliens have jaws as well as a second mouth if they do not eat: they use the first ones to rip in the meat and the second one to force-feed the captives.
In this perspective, the second mouth skull attack is just an occasional bonus.

The thing gotta eat.

Not if it works in a similar way to a car engine, as it was repeatingly theorized with the "acid as battery acid" hypothesis in the previous decades.

In this perspective, the Alien is a kind of pseudo-biological robot, which just needs some kind of fuel (derived from the atmosphere and/or preys? Does it NEED biomass? Is it "chemically omnivorous"?) to keep working and then reproducing.

We do know they aren't part of the animal kingdom. Since Aliens are silicon-based, they aren't even the same biological domains as terrestrial life.

[SiL]

We don't know if they're silicon based. Ash said the original facehugger was shedding its cells and replacing them with polarised silicon, but that doesn't mean it's silicon based.

Everything eats something. Makes as much sense for Aliens to eat people as anything else.

[CANNON]

We don't know if they're silicon based. Ash said the original facehugger was shedding its cells and replacing them with polarised silicon, but that doesn't mean it's silicon based.

Everything eats something. Makes as much sense for Aliens to eat people as anything else.

Agreed - it makes total sense. I also think it would be interesting to see that on film. I imagine the camera panning down a long dark corridor on a ship within the transition of a hive. Within that frame a flicking light in the background and from behind an Alien can be seen hunched over what looks like what's left of a body on the floor, lifting and dropping it with every bite. The sounds of the body thumping as it repeatedly hits the metal floor together with the crunching and breaking of bone echoing down the dark and silent corridor.

Could make for a great horror shot.