Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: In our look at the xenomorph life cycle, we finally
Speaker 2: come to the horrifying face Hugger. This is the creature
Speaker 2: that emerges from the traditional xenomorph egg, aggressively attaches itself
Speaker 2: to the face of a human host, implants an embryo
Speaker 2: in the comatose host organism, and then dies. The embryo,
Speaker 2: of course, develops into a standard xenomorph, which we'll explore
Speaker 2: in the next episode. There are a few different ways
Speaker 2: to look at the basics of the face Hugger. On
Speaker 2: one level, we can ground it in the dark surrealism
Speaker 2: of hr Giger, another twist on sexual reproduction, Freudian death drive,
Speaker 2: and physiology. But just as we previously face the question
Speaker 2: of whether the xenomorph egg is an organism in and
Speaker 2: of itself, we must also consider this with the face
Speaker 2: Hugger to some degree. In HowStuffWorks dot COM's How the
Speaker 2: Alien Xenomorph Works from twenty twelve, I explored the idea
Speaker 2: that the face hugger might not constitute a true organism
Speaker 2: at all, but would rather be a delivery system for
Speaker 2: the embryo. No more an organism than a sperm cell
Speaker 2: is an organism, and of course this alone is a
Speaker 2: comparison worth considering. A human sperm cell is not a
Speaker 2: human being, but it does metabolize sugar to produce energy, grow,
Speaker 2: and move on its own to reach the egg as
Speaker 2: part of human reproduction. But anyway, back in twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: the face hugger also brought to my mind at any rate,
Speaker 2: the male argonaut or paper nautilus, which has a detachable
Speaker 2: spermatophore filled arm called a hectocautulyus that it leaves with
Speaker 2: its mate. So if the xenomorph egg could be considered
Speaker 2: an organism, we might consider the face hugger to be
Speaker 2: its hectocodulus of sorts, only one that moves on its
Speaker 2: own to seek out the host. However, there's an important
Speaker 2: point to be made here, and one that I don't
Speaker 2: think is properly reflected in that twenty twelve How Stuffworks
Speaker 2: article that I wrote. A hectocodulus is not free swimming
Speaker 2: like a sperm cell. Some creatures of the hectocodilust use
Speaker 2: it as a sex organ that remains attached. In others,
Speaker 2: such as with the argonaut, it detaches and the male
Speaker 2: manually leaves it, with the female leaving it inside a
Speaker 2: special cavity in her mantle. In the Free League Alien RPG,
Speaker 2: the authors present three rival theories concerning the face hugger.
Speaker 2: The first, in line with what we've been discussing, is
Speaker 2: that it deposits an embryo of some sort, thus making
Speaker 2: it another morph of the same species. The second idea
Speaker 2: is that it deposits not an embryo, but a cancerous
Speaker 2: growth that mutates into a chessbuster. This, I would imagine
Speaker 2: puts it more in line with the concept of the
Speaker 2: black goo in the alien universe. The third premises of
Speaker 2: the face hugger is its own species in a symbiotic
Speaker 2: relationship with the prime xenomorph species, and that it injects
Speaker 2: bacteria into the host that leads to the development of
Speaker 2: the chess burster. Part of the confusion here is due
Speaker 2: to the fact that the developing embryo or chess burster
Speaker 2: inside the host takes on at least some of the
Speaker 2: host's genetics, be it the chessbuster we see emerge from
Speaker 2: the quadruped host in Alien three, or if we're considering
Speaker 2: Ash's comments in the original Alien that the xenomorph that
Speaker 2: emerges from Nostromo Executive Officer Caine is essentially quote Cain's Sun.
Speaker 2: And even this is not entirely outside the boundaries of
Speaker 2: the natural world, as recent studies have shown that horsehair
Speaker 2: worms steal genes from host organisms in order to control
Speaker 2: their behavior, and we see plenty of other examples of
Speaker 2: horizontal gene transfer, the non sexual transfer of genetic information
Speaker 2: between genomes. But let's get back to the face hugger itself.
Speaker 2: I turned to the paper Science Fiction The Biology of
Speaker 2: the Alien in Alien by Armand im Curis and Mona
Speaker 2: Wi Leo, published just last year in the Portland Press.
Speaker 2: They classify the face hugger as a quote hoaxed attack
Speaker 2: larval stage and conclude that quote unattacking larva injecting the
Speaker 2: next larval stage is realistic for Earthling parasites. For a
Speaker 2: natural world example of something related, they turn to Seculina Carcini,
Speaker 2: the crab Hacker Barnacle, one of the parasitic Rhizocephala crab
Speaker 2: castrator barnacles. One of the organism's early motes is a
Speaker 2: specialized juvenile form known as a kinragon, which boasts only
Speaker 2: the antennuals necessary to attach to its crab host, and
Speaker 2: is otherwise a living hypodermic needle that exists only to
Speaker 2: inject a cell mass known as a vermigon into the crab,
Speaker 2: and the vermigon is described here by the authors as
Speaker 2: microscopic and worm like. The injected vermigon then proceeds to
Speaker 2: grow like roots through the host organism, branching through its organs,
Speaker 2: leaving it unable to reproduce and completely controlling its physiology
Speaker 2: and behavior. Absolutely fascinating and another example of how the
Speaker 2: natural world is always willing to match even our most
Speaker 2: bizarre sci fi and fantasy inventions. We might well think
Speaker 2: of the face hugger as a kind of kentragon and
Speaker 2: its reproductive payload as a vermigon, And indeed, the vermigon's
Speaker 2: role in the natural world is to grow and establish
Speaker 2: the adult form of the organism within the body of
Speaker 2: the hosts. Only in the case of the xenomorph, that
Speaker 2: final form must burst free. As we'll discuss in the
Speaker 2: next Monster Fact episode, so tune in for additional episodes
Speaker 2: of the Monster Fact each week. We'll be wrapping up
Speaker 2: our series concerning the alien's xenomorph in the next week
Speaker 2: or two leading up to the debut of the new
Speaker 2: Alien Romulus film, and if there's anything new and noteworthy
Speaker 2: in that film, I may do an extra Monster Fact
Speaker 2: where I just chat about that a little bit. As always,
Speaker 2: you can email us with feedback and requests at contact
Speaker 2: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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