Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamban. This is The Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. Previously
Speaker 2: on The Monster Fact, I devoted an eight part series
Speaker 2: to the various xenomorphic organisms of the alien universe, along
Speaker 2: with bonus episodes on the creatures of Alien Earth and
Speaker 2: the events of the Aliens Versus Avengers Comics crossover. If
Speaker 2: you're new to the podcast, you can find these and
Speaker 2: other episodes in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind archive
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. So I covered a number
Speaker 2: of alien forms, but I skipped over one of the
Speaker 2: most iconic xenomorphs of all time, the Alien Queen. Perhaps
Speaker 2: because she's such a high profile and beloved monster, I
Speaker 2: figured there just might not be that much new to highlight,
Speaker 2: and hey, maybe there isn't, but here we go. You'll,
Speaker 2: of course remember the Queen from nineteen eighty six's Aliens,
Speaker 2: in which Ripley and her fellow survivors find out exactly
Speaker 2: what's laying all of those eggs at the heart of
Speaker 2: the LV four twenty six terraforming colony. The xenomorph queen
Speaker 2: proves a deadly and highly intelligent adversary, capable of coordinating
Speaker 2: the other xenomorphs in her hive as well as exploiting
Speaker 2: human technology. Basically, she resembles the various other alien morphs
Speaker 2: in her hive, only much larger in stature, with an
Speaker 2: enormous armored headcrest dorsal spikes on her back in a
Speaker 2: second set of arms I assume for egg manipulation or
Speaker 2: possibly resin manipulation, because, of course, when established at the
Speaker 2: center of a hive, she also boasts an egg sack
Speaker 2: so enormous and engorged with xenomorph eggs that she has
Speaker 2: to essentially be secured in place with resin tendrils that
Speaker 2: are secreted by the worker morphs in the hud. This
Speaker 2: of course, closely resembles the bloated abamin of the termite queen,
Speaker 2: which can grow to many many times the size of
Speaker 2: her body, enabling her to lay tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: eggs per day, all while secured in her royal chamber.
Speaker 2: We have to consider this as the primary natural world
Speaker 2: analog here for the alien queen, as we discussed before,
Speaker 2: within the Alien universe lore, and I'm rather partial to
Speaker 2: the free League Alien RPG overview of everything here, but
Speaker 2: you may differ. Xenomorphs can produce eggs without the aid
Speaker 2: of a queen. This ties into some deleted scenes from
Speaker 2: the original Alien motion picture that have been I believe
Speaker 2: been restored in some cuts. So a drone can secure
Speaker 2: a host with resin secretions and use its tail to
Speaker 2: inject the host with a cocktail of enzymes and hormones,
Speaker 2: thus causing the host to transform into an egg or
Speaker 2: ovo morph. This process, however, is of course slow, and
Speaker 2: a larger scale reproductive method is going to be necessary
Speaker 2: when xenomorphs set up hives in host rich environments. Now,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of natural world analogs to look at
Speaker 2: here in which organisms employ different reproductive strategies depending on
Speaker 2: environmental conditions. You have facultative parthenogenesis. This is a great
Speaker 2: example in which animals that normally reproduce sexually with a
Speaker 2: partner can reproduce asexually generally due to lack of available partners.
Speaker 2: We see this in some birds, sharks, rays, and large
Speaker 2: reptiles like the komodo dragon. Coming back to the high environment,
Speaker 2: we also see this in bees, in which some queens
Speaker 2: workers and solitary bees can reproduce without fertilization if need
Speaker 2: be in resource triggered switching or cyclic parthenogenesis. So an
Speaker 2: example of this would be water fleas a change can
Speaker 2: take place due to available resources. Density can also determine
Speaker 2: sex determination in the case of the green spoon worm,
Speaker 2: as can social environment in the cases of the clownfish,
Speaker 2: and temperature as we see in sea turtles and crocodilians.
Speaker 2: We might also understand the queen's role by thinking about
Speaker 2: cases in which animals like rats and mice may ramp
Speaker 2: up their reproduction into a kind of plague mode due
Speaker 2: to an abundance of resources, either due to natural botanical
Speaker 2: cycles or human agricultural abundance. In the case of the aliens,
Speaker 2: this landfall of resources is going to present itself in
Speaker 2: the form of, say, a fresh off world colony, and
Speaker 2: they're more than happy to make a plague of themselves. Granted,
Speaker 2: the xenomorpse life mission might lean more overtly destructive than
Speaker 2: natural world propagation. This could be due to it being
Speaker 2: an extraterrestrial invasive and therefore a naturally disruptive force in
Speaker 2: any given ecosystem that it did not evolve to thrive
Speaker 2: within and find balance within. It could also have as
Speaker 2: much to do with the artificial human manipulated rorements it
Speaker 2: keeps turning up in, or, of course, they could constitute
Speaker 2: part of a rather apocalyptic biological weapons armory. Part of
Speaker 2: the fun of the Alien Universe is that it keeps
Speaker 2: us guessing. Tune in for additional episodes off the Monster, Fact,
Speaker 2: the Artifact, or Animalius Dependium each week. As always, you
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com.
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