Quote from: Fiendishly Inventive on Jan 31, 2020, 04:16:31 AM
I always wondered if retaining the Carapace on a number of individuals showed a certain amount of higher intelligence than the rest.
Maybe; It seems to vary. Six was a Warrior with the ridged head, but she was very intelligent; by contrast, barring Grid, most of the smooth headed Aliens aren't very intelligent in AVP, as they run into gunfire. Warriors are fairly smart, but they're more self sacrificial compared to castes that are larger/rarer.
For example, in ants, Workers and Soldiers die in droves in wars or battles or what have you; By contrast, Queens and Princesses rarely fight, except in Slave Making Species because of their value. Drones also exhibit this, as barring competition in nuptial flights/lek mating, or female calling where they search out a reproductive female's pheromones, they do even LESS (there are a few exceptions, with Camponotus males in the Nearctic and Palearctic helping to share food, groom their siblings, and form a 'circle' with their more 'royal' brothers and sisters when they overwinter in the nest). Overall, despite varying degrees of self sustainment or defensive capabilities, Queens are mostly egg factories and Drones are just sperm sacks. But they're integral to the Hive's survival and/or at least also very rare, so they can't be gotten rid of too easily
Even still, with Aliens, it's different; EVERY organism, barring maybe Facehuggers (which are much like real life ant drones in the way they breed and die) can hunt, fight, and harvest, with the 'castes' as a whole being very fluid in duties much like real ants don't always have discrepancies between Soldiers and Workers (unlike Termites with more rigid and developed caste systems) with one major exception; Reproductive Castes. Except in species that are Gamergates, a female worker is ALWAYS sterile, and can never become a Queen or Princess. By contrast, we've heard of and seen aliens turning into Queens gradually; but at the same time, it's a transitional process and requires what could best be described as 'sequential hermaphroditism' and the adaptation of latent sexual traits within the species (namely the infamous crest, and later on a second set of arms, digitigrade heels, and the ovipositor and throne).
The 'females' reproduce parthenogenetically...most likely...and their 'male portions' either become nonexistant or serve only in the capacity of self fertilization, more like how Angler females are still 'female' but have parasitic males as gonads. By proxy, you have Drones/Warriors that can eggmorph, but it isn't parasitization like in female wasps as there's no 'embryo' involved (Chet nonwithstanding) being injected as a means of food; Instead, it's more like 'traumatic insemination', a male reproductive tactic where a host or organism is injected and is in of itself FERTILIZED, rather than injecting a fertilized embryo or egg. Admittedly, there is still a 'yolk' or something of the sort that helps develop the host into an Ovomorph rather than turn them into the Ovomorph, but it's still not the same as regurgitating the eggs or quite like a parasitoid wasp's female eggs, due to the nature of the pathogen, which is like injected alongside a sort of 'sperm' or gamete to fertilize the egg and help it grow.
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Alternatively, and a bit more divisive I'm sure, would be traumatic insemination upon a Queen, or even a Praetorian, to help develop/grow an ovipositor and kickstart the first clutch of eggs, or even help develop a line of Royal/Queen Eggs for future use. It HAS been mentioned, albeit in the EU, of this kind of behavior, but it's obviously not very popular as it familiarizes the Aliens a bit too much (although with the revelation they've been made, namely from a parasitic wasp mixed with the Black Good and the more 'natural' Neomorph, then it at least makes sense there had been, somewhere along the way, a more naturalized method of reproduction combined with a less resource intensive but slower method of parthogenesis).
All in all, it's more of the dictuum and what's 'male' or 'female' by Alien standards; The Praetorians and Queens are 'female' much like the Anglerfish combined with a Eusocial Insect Queen, whereas the 'Alate' in this case is like an ergatomorphic male (in design) but of a similar size to the Praetorian, and if it replicates at all, it is through traumatic insemination to eggmorph which can be fatal; otherwise, it is useful as a hunter or guard (like in some species of Crabronid or Spheciid Wasp males, mostly Mud Daubers, who DO construct intricate nests and hives for their brood much like the Aliens do) but on a larger scale, with some independent thought (as a parallel to Drones of female calling species who must fend for themselves as they search out the source of a Queen's pheromones) to boot, which helps when the Aliens are a mix of different insects (mostly hymenopterans) rather than just one.
