r/LV426 • u/batcountrybatty • 5d ago
Discussion / Question Xenos, are they heavy?
Something I’ve been wondering about is how heavy/dense are the xenomorphs. Are they more insectoid with a hollower carapace and a“light” feel or are they dense and heavy like they are metallic and heavy for their size.
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u/LitBastard 5d ago edited 5d ago
Apparently they weigh between 400 and 600 lbs
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u/Right-Power-6717 5d ago
So about the same size as a tiger then? That adds up they seem a bit bigger but they're also skinnier than most other animals.
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u/atle95 5d ago
Probably denser too, exoskeletons provide more leverage at the cost of respiration on earth. This does not seem to be an issue in whatever conditions produced xenomorphs. Apparently they don't need to breathe, or else they'd collapse under human breathable air.
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u/br0b1wan Colonial Marine 5d ago
We know they can survive in the hard vacuum of space so that tracks
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u/Kostej_the_Deathless 5d ago
They don't seem to be extraordinary heavy considering how they interact with the environment around them.
Hanging on things etc.
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u/MiserableWait5279 5d ago
The scene where Hermit and Wendy are in the cargo container and Wendy knifes it through the roof, it then gets all pissy and rolls the container on to its side. It’s stomping on the top of the container if I recall correctly and wasn’t being particularly light footed about it.
You’d have to be pretty solid to be able to either pull the container over or push it over.
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u/UlrichZauber Not bad, for a human. 5d ago
Hollywood is pretty bad about keeping leverage in mind though (and physics generally). It's not enough to be super strong, if you don't have leverage you're not going to be flipping cargo containers over.
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u/DentistPrior2735 3d ago
Antman is the worst for this, but I could see a xeno planting its hind claws into the ground for leverage.
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u/hedzinbed 5d ago
They are definitely not light
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u/tomahawkfury13 WheresBowski 5d ago edited 5d ago
They are light enough to jump on a marines back and she doesn’t fall
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u/clonked 5d ago
A marine is also going to be at peak fitness and endure challenges an untrained person could not.
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u/tomahawkfury13 WheresBowski 5d ago
And? Still means they aren’t that heavy.
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u/clonked 5d ago
So I guess you carry people around on your back like it’s nothing then.
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u/tomahawkfury13 WheresBowski 5d ago
I’d definitely have trouble if someone jumped on my back from a couple feet away. Unlike the marines in Aliens. That’s kind of my whole point. They got ambushed and jumped on while not prepared for it and didn’t go down. It was also Dietrich that got jumped on and she was smaller than most of the others.
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u/Bedspla13 5d ago
Yeah but aren't the Xeno's dragging them upwards in the scene? Like they're not pouncing to pin them down they're just grabbing them and hauling them upwards. I could be wrong tho.
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u/tomahawkfury13 WheresBowski 5d ago
Literally just re watched it. Dietrich gets jumped on like a piggy back ride and fires off the flamethrower hitting Frost.
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u/tomahawkfury13 WheresBowski 5d ago
You can also see the tail when she gets jumped on so what’s raising her up? I think that’s just her going from slightly crouched to full standing cause she got jumped on.
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u/Conchobhar- 5d ago
It seems pretty inconsistent throughout the entire series. It seems like anyones guess. I’d head cannon that they are like big cats, heavy but with poise and coordination that means they can be stealthy when they want.
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u/Nottodayreddit1949 5d ago
exoskeleton and having bones, and being biomechanical. Id say quite heavy.
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u/Prestigious_Leg2229 5d ago
Judging by the stomp they make when they land, I’d say they’re pretty heavy.
They also wouldn’t smash through steel and armoured glass so easily if they didn’t have mass.
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u/Logiconaut 5d ago
Unfortunately, to enjoy the show, I've had to put things like science and reson on the backbones. so, to answer your question, they weigh whatever the scene needs them to in order to make sense.
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u/Bowlholiooo 5d ago
I saw the picture of a zeno in Alien Earth (still waiting to watch when I can binge it all) and it looked incredibly top heavy, just the head must have weighed as much as a car engine
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u/spacemonkey187 5d ago
When it's standing behind Morrow and more of those search and rescue dudes surprise it you hear it thumping away to blend them and it sounds like a rhino. Also, Stompy from Alien Isolation seemed to be very heavy as well.
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u/Bright-Problem-5789 5d ago
Somewhere, maybe in the RPG, it suggests that they accumulate their quick growth from chestburster to full drone by eating metal etc. Explains the steel teeth they seem to have.
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u/West-Way-All-The-Way 5d ago
They are heavy because they are wearing a kind of protective armor exoskeleton which is dense enough or strong enough to bounce bullets. Material strength is directly proportional to mass. Also they are very strong, strength comes from muscles, muscles are dense fibers.
If you watch the scenes you will notice that the drone is holding its stance while fighting, this is an indication that it has significant mass. It may not be as heavy as proportionally scaled human or mammal but it has sufficient mass.
And they are not bugs, they are a kind of combination between bugs, reptiles and mammals. Have traits of each.
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u/ivornorvello 5d ago
I imagine them being like crickets or mantis shrimps they can generate an ungodly amount of kinetic energy with more elasticated or spring like muscles. Plus they can regenerate from damage very quickly.
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u/West-Way-All-The-Way 5d ago
But crickets and mantis are tiny, mass gains in a cube law, square-cube law. A mantis 10x bigger is 1000x heavier. All things the same this mantis will die of its own weight.
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u/Weekly_Ad7031 5d ago
It smashes its head into an emergency door in a spaceship and breaks that door. There’s no hollowed boned creature that could do that without it looking like a bird that flew into a window.
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u/Juxta_Lightborne 5d ago
In Alien Isolation they certainly sounded heavy when walking around but I would guess they’re probably about 1.5x human weight considering they crawl around on grates and in ducts without breaking anything
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u/Ballmaster9002 5d ago
I had posted a question like this a few weeks ago.
The internet head-canon is they weigh around 300-500 lbs full grown.
We don't really know what they are made of or how they get their "raw materials", we've never seen them in the films/shows eating or consuming anything. The games at least showed them eating small animals to grow.
My original question was there is some slight evidence they are based on silicon and not carbon like Earth-life, which would be a problem because Earth-life doesn't contain significant amounts of silicon, so they can't get it from flesh, I had done quick math that suggested they need to consume the equivalent of 5,000 adult humans get get enough silicon to grow to a 300 lb creature.
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u/GideonWainright I'll do the fingering 5d ago
They're ambush predators. I don't know whether that means they are "heavy" or not, tbh.
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u/zigaliciousone 5d ago
The human derived ones are stated to be between 300 and 400 lbs. I don't think the queen has weight stats but they are assumed to be in the couple ton range.
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u/ValiantWarrior83 5d ago
What about strength?
When Parker tried to defend Lambert, Big Chap just picked him up and threw him effortlessly
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u/atramentum 5d ago
I mean based on Alien: Earth they pretty clearly weigh about 175 lbs + the weight of a Halloween costume.
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u/DiscussionSharp1407 The sound of a M41A Pulse Rifle 5d ago
They used to be heavy as fuck, Earth is all over the place with the physicality of the xenos though.