Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb And this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time our journey through the alien universe. This time brings us to the mysterious planet for the rotting paradise of Alien Covenant. Once an occupied world of the Engineers, the planet suffered a mass extinction event at the hands of the rogue android David. Descending from the sky in a stolen Engineer starship, he unleashed a devastating bombardment of the skeetide ampules eradicating most non botanical non fungal life with the dreaded evolutionary accelerant agent A zero slash thirty nine to fifty nine x dot ninety one slash fifteen. But as we've explored already, the black Goo doesn't destroy everything in such incidents. No, it also creates new dangerous organisms to prowl the lifeless borders of devastation, and it tends to find its way back to the basic form of a xenomorphic predator, in this case, working its way up from fungal and possibly insect life. The neomorph begins as a fungal growth that produces small pods or egg sacs, which release a swarm of moats upon disturbance. These moats are able to move through the air by their own volition, sometimes synchronizing in murmerations to zero in on a potential host organism's vulnerable orifices. The moats are often compared to plant pollen, though of course pollen depends on vectors such as wind or other organisms to move from one plant to the next. We might instead be tempted to compare these moats to fairy flies or fairy wasps, the smallest known flying organisms. As pointed out by Julius Klarr in a twenty twenty four article for The Sierra Club, fairy wasp body length can measure as little as zero point one three nine millimeters, equal to the thickness of a human hair, so it's not out of the question for something so small to be capable of powered and deliberate flight. According to Freeley Publishing's Alien RPG source books, the neomorph moats make their way into a host's body, where they deliver microscopic amounts of the black goo to the host's blood stream, and then the moats die. In the blood, the evolutionary accelerant mutates white blood cells, forming a tumor like mass that rapidly develops into an embryo, referred to as a blood burster. When this small quadruped is ready to emerge from the host, it bursts out through whatever part of the anatomy is most accessible the mouth, the back, even an eye socket. It depends in large part on where the tumor develops. If it survives, the bloodbuster rapidly develops into a neomorph. These medium size pales xenomorphic predators boast goblin shark like protrusible jaws, much like the deacon that we previously discuss, along with a whipping spike tail in a cluster of dorsal spikes, which, as a blood burster, aids in its emergence. Let's talk a bit more about those goblin shark jaws. Though the deep sea Mitsukarina ostoni isn't alone in having protrusible jaws. Shark jaws are not attached to the organism's cartilage skull and move as separate parts, allowing for varying degrees of protrusion when attacking prey. The goblin shark merely boasts the most extreme jaw protrusion known, both in terms of reach and speed. According to a twenty sixteen article by Nakaya at All published in Scientific Reports, the jaw sling shots forward at a maximum velocity of three point one meters per second to eight point six to nine point four pcent of the total length of the shark. They cited the phylogenetic evidence that suggests the adaptation evolved in response to their food poor deep sea environment and is a possible trade off for the loss of strong swimming ability. It might not be able to catch desired prey in an all out pursuit, but if they get close enough, their jaw length can make up the difference. As seen in alien covenant, neomorphs can act as both pack hunters and solitary stalkers. While they may enter prolonged states of hibernation, they're ultimately short lived and don't seem to engage in any form of host procurement or parasitic reproduction while alive. When they die or are killed, their corpses simply produce more sporesas ready to release more black moats when a potential host ventures near. Now, in the natural world, we certainly have organisms that die after reproduction, what we call simularity. These organisms reproduce but a single time and then die. Pacific salmon are a great example of this, along with certain insects and molluscs. The neomorph, however, would seem to reproduce through death, which is of course a fitting xenomorphic and gigresqu twist on everything it kills, it dies, and through its death it ideally spreads more of those motes that will produce new blood bursters and new neomorphs, presumably until all life on a world is reduced to just a few hibernating xenos and their weighting fungal eggsacts, we might reasonably compare it to various pathogens that spread via contact with dead hosts. That is the neomorph. But hey, tune in for additional episodes of the Monster Fact each week. Our Alien series will continue next week with the classic xenomorph eggs, so we are going to get into the classic xenomorph life cycle and biology. So write in if you have thoughts on anything we've covered thus far, and as always, you can email us at contact, it's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb And this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time our journey through the alien universe. This time brings us to the mysterious planet for the rotting paradise of Alien Covenant. Once an occupied world of the Engineers, the planet suffered a mass extinction event at the hands of the rogue android David. Descending from the sky in a stolen Engineer starship, he unleashed a devastating bombardment of the skeetide ampules eradicating most non botanical non fungal life with the dreaded evolutionary accelerant agent A zero slash thirty nine to fifty nine x dot ninety one slash fifteen. But as we've explored already, the black Goo doesn't destroy everything in such incidents. No, it also creates new dangerous organisms to prowl the lifeless borders of devastation, and it tends to find its way back to the basic form of a xenomorphic predator, in this case, working its way up from fungal and possibly insect life. The neomorph begins as a fungal growth that produces small pods or egg sacs, which release a swarm of moats upon disturbance. These moats are able to move through the air by their own volition, sometimes synchronizing in murmerations to zero in on a potential host organism's vulnerable orifices. The moats are often compared to plant pollen, though of course pollen depends on vectors such as wind or other organisms to move from one plant to the next. We might instead be tempted to compare these moats to fairy flies or fairy wasps, the smallest known flying organisms. As pointed out by Julius Klarr in a twenty twenty four article for The Sierra Club, fairy wasp body length can measure as little as zero point one three nine millimeters, equal to the thickness of a human hair, so it's not out of the question for something so small to be capable of powered and deliberate flight. According to Freeley Publishing's Alien RPG source books, the neomorph moats make their way into a host's body, where they deliver microscopic amounts of the black goo to the host's blood stream, and then the moats die. In the blood, the evolutionary accelerant mutates white blood cells, forming a tumor like mass that rapidly develops into an embryo, referred to as a blood burster. When this small quadruped is ready to emerge from the host, it bursts out through whatever part of the anatomy is most accessible the mouth, the back, even an eye socket. It depends in large part on where the tumor develops. If it survives, the bloodbuster rapidly develops into a neomorph. These medium size pales xenomorphic predators boast goblin shark like protrusible jaws, much like the deacon that we previously discuss, along with a whipping spike tail in a cluster of dorsal spikes, which, as a blood burster, aids in its emergence. Let's talk a bit more about those goblin shark jaws. Though the deep sea Mitsukarina ostoni isn't alone in having protrusible jaws. Shark jaws are not attached to the organism's cartilage skull and move as separate parts, allowing for varying degrees of protrusion when attacking prey. The goblin shark merely boasts the most extreme jaw protrusion known, both in terms of reach and speed. According to a twenty sixteen article by Nakaya at All published in Scientific Reports, the jaw sling shots forward at a maximum velocity of three point one meters per second to eight point six to nine point four pcent of the total length of the shark. They cited the phylogenetic evidence that suggests the adaptation evolved in response to their food poor deep sea environment and is a possible trade off for the loss of strong swimming ability. It might not be able to catch desired prey in an all out pursuit, but if they get close enough, their jaw length can make up the difference. As seen in alien covenant, neomorphs can act as both pack hunters and solitary stalkers. While they may enter prolonged states of hibernation, they're ultimately short lived and don't seem to engage in any form of host procurement or parasitic reproduction while alive. When they die or are killed, their corpses simply produce more sporesas ready to release more black moats when a potential host ventures near. Now, in the natural world, we certainly have organisms that die after reproduction, what we call simularity. These organisms reproduce but a single time and then die. Pacific salmon are a great example of this, along with certain insects and molluscs. The neomorph, however, would seem to reproduce through death, which is of course a fitting xenomorphic and gigresqu twist on everything it kills, it dies, and through its death it ideally spreads more of those motes that will produce new blood bursters and new neomorphs, presumably until all life on a world is reduced to just a few hibernating xenos and their weighting fungal eggsacts, we might reasonably compare it to various pathogens that spread via contact with dead hosts. That is the neomorph. But hey, tune in for additional episodes of the Monster Fact each week. Our Alien series will continue next week with the classic xenomorph eggs, so we are going to get into the classic xenomorph life cycle and biology. So write in if you have thoughts on anything we've covered thus far, and as always, you can email us at contact, it's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.