Love any organism who’s lifecycle is some sort of strange multigenerational multibranching thing you need graphs to kinda understand
Behold, the weirdest insect life cycle that I know of
some organisms have special larva just to make other different larva, sometimes several in a row, and to this day there’s only one famous example of that in fiction
Xenomorphs remind me of trematodes (aka “flukes,” a type of parasitic flatworm), because there actually are types of trematode that have “soldier” and “queen” castes.
But what’s really funny is that if xenomorphs were like trematodes, the queen and soldier castes would *not* be the final stage.
This is the most complex possible trematode lifecycle. In the trematodes that have castes, soldiers and queens are both the “redia I” stage. If the xenomorphs were like trematodes, they would have at least one, maybe two life stages left before they made a cocoon (metacercarium) and then became adults.
Bottom left and bottom right may look like dirt and rocks but those are more bugs!! They didn’t get names!! Maybe that’s respectful of their wishes since they already dress for anonymity
