Quote from: VenomX on Dec 15, 2006, 11:26:10 PM
Is there a forum thread somewhere where this is talked about?
Not any more. It was posted on the IMDb back in 2005.
Quote from: VenomX on Dec 15, 2006, 11:26:10 PM
Now why on earth a life form WOULD have acid for blood, that's another matter. Sure, it makes the movie monster just that much cooler, and of course once a creature develops acid blood, natural evolution might suggest it would probably keep it around for future generations since it is, after all, a handy defensive mechanism. But as far as why something would spontaneously get acid for blood in the first place I have no answer to, nor do I have one for the speed of growth.
All blood has acidity to various degrees. The aliens' ecosystem may require a lower pH in their blood in order to survive in their environment.
Quote from: VenomX on Dec 15, 2006, 11:26:10 PM
I still have a harder time with the turning its victims into eggs than any of the other things. Not impossible, just very far fetched.
Well, it happened on the
Nostromo and was almost shown on Fury 161. Open your mind.
As for the process, it's very simple:
The process by which this occurs may be functionally similar to the embryo implantation process as carried out by a facehugger. As the facehugger-implanted embryo converts a portion of the host into an embryo, so does the imago-implanted factor convert a much larger portion of the host into an egg, further supporting the idea of functional and morphological identity being conserved between the juvenile and adult life stages. This factor will hereafter be referred to as the "spore".
The development of the queen-imago as sole reproducing member of a nest may be explained via the existence of the postulated spore. A maturation phase has been suggested for eggs during which they are not capable of identifying a valid host or of producing a viable larva. This maturation phase would correspond to the period of time after the spore is introduced to the host body during which the tissue of the host is converted into egg tissue. In addition to her large size, the queen is impressive in her continuous production of eggs. It remains unclear as to whether or not these eggs are mature immediately after they have been released from the ovipositor, however the rapid creation of eggs in this fashion would be greatly facilitated if the bulk of the egg matter as seen within the translucent egg creating organs was merely specially aggregated "yolk" material which had been implanted with a spore by the queen. The infected yolk would then be converted into an egg by the spore, just as would an infected host.
In this case, the development of the queen-imago and her complex egg production organs reflect the creation of a system whereby the queen converts nutrients into a yolk or "pseudo-host", specially designed to be implanted with a spore. The queen, in addition to being the organizational hub of the nest, can then be seen as a special processor designed to convert raw materials into pseudo-hosts, while the spore is seen as the remains of the ancestral system of reproduction wherein hosts were aquired by adults for implantation. Possibly, queens retain the ancestral ability to infect real hosts with spores, and may rely on this capacity in the event that the egg production organs sustain irreparable damage.
This implies that there were two periods of host-mediated adaptation during the lifecycle of ancestral organisms. The first occurred during the maturation phase of the egg, and the second occurred during the gestation phase of the embryo. It further implies that the queen may direct the adaptation of her offspring by creating special pseudo-hosts based on the information obtained during her own gestation phase. This may permit a faster or more efficient means of achieving adaptation to a new environment, and may allow the queen to control the makeup of the nest by changing the character of the pseudo-hosts.
