Happy Birthday!

 Nah, all my dreams are in colour. Some freaky shit going on up there though. Stuff that'd turn most people insane. Yeah! My dreams are pretty much H P Lovecraft worlds!! Gotta take a leaf out of Giger's book and make a diary. Could be some good stories in there somewhere.

 Damn! I had a brilliant addition to this thread earlier today, now I've gone and bloody forgotten it!
May end up starting a few more threads sometime very soon.
 Damn, though. 

 You are right, Thedus. Was just throwing it out there, really. I don't think that the aliens in AVP even matched the Fiorina alien for speed whenon all fours. Yes, they could scuttle through small tunnels, but no other alien I have seen runs flat out like that one does.
 Oh well, back to the drawing board for that one!

 

Possibly, or that he was wrong? It is not really a contradiction, because what was in the pyramid was probably not the whole story of Predator's and Earth.

 Yeah. I have thought that too. Maybe it's a nod to the comics. Specifically Predator: Vol 1, in which General Phillips tells Det. Schaefer that the Predators hunted the Dinosaurs to extinction. That, for me, contradicted the Predator Hunting Code more than anything. No self-respecting hunter would wipe out its prey species. The code (not killing pregnant women/unarmed [unworthy] opponents etc.) would prohibit any such action.
 So maybe they hunted Dinosaurs for a while, then left earth when the asteroid smashed it up. Then they forgot about it for a few million years, then they find it again. Could work, I suppose. A legendary lost hunting ground! The Predators Atlantis!!

 I find that the Triceratops skull in AVP-R directly contradicts the first AVP. Sebstian said that the Predators found Earth THOUSANDS of years ago. The Triceratops genus became extinct 65 MILLION years ago. Unless Colin and Greg Strause are Creationists, of course! 

 The skull in Predator 2 was some weird, four-eyed alien thing with giant mandibles at either side of its head.

 The Jockey skull in AVP-R. Mmmmm. Dunno about that one. Are they extinct or extant?? One question never answered by any film.   

BishopIII, I can't tell you how welcome your input here has been!    (+)

Thanks! It's great to finally find an outlet for my ideas and theories!! 

 I believe now that the lack of tubes on the dog creature's back may have no more important or complex a reason than streamlining. Think about it, the animal runs about on all fours, the tubes would, in that position, cause unnecessary drag. A bipedal alien wouldn't have such a problem with the tubes facing rearward.
 The facehugger undoubtedly contained twin sets of alien genetic material. This makes sense as a young queen would be far more concerned with staying hidden, suspending herself, and laying eggs. She is hardly the most mobile alien in the hive, after all, and a new worker, one that matures before she does, would kick-start the hive into motion. This method would be far more efficient than, say, the ant method of a single queen feeding and nursing her first workers to maturity. Several hosts would be made available before the queen emerges from her host. Within a couple of days, depending on host populations, there could be over thirty aliens in the hive!
   

.... But, still doesn't explain the 'dog' creature having no dorsal tubes. It is most likely that they are absent due to practicalities such as running on all fours.

 Well, there are very few differences between the creatures in Alien and Aliens (Apart from what are actually minor differences in the head and arms, the design is pretty much the same). As for A: R, I wasn't a fan of the pointless redesign to the creatures that ADI inflicted upon us (interesting that Giger thought that they were the closest to his designs out of all the films, when actually, no they're not!), I wasn't a huge fan of the film per se. It was all rather pointless and a waste of time really.
 That aside, I don't think that such differences were intended to be noticed by the audience. This would mean that, film-wise, the A: R aliens are meant to look much the same as the one in Alien. I think presence of a 'canopy' denotes both age and caste. I think that such a difference is decided, ultimately by the Queen, by the number of moults that the alien goes through. This is a similar set up to that of Termites, where the number of moults and usage of growth hormones can decide whether a nymph will grow into either a worker, or a soldier.

 When you're right, you're right!
I did actually think about the alien from alien 3, just after I'd posted that. I can't think of a way around it, damn! 
 

Happy Birthday, armless_man!

I've never really thought about the behavioral habits of the Alien.  Now that I am, it appeared to be in some sort of survival mode.  Killing all that would have been a threat to the queen.  I haven't seen the movie in a while, but were there prisoners still locked up in cells?  If so, maybe the Alien was saving them for the queen and doing away with the pests...

 I think there is validity to this. Clemens was coming at Ripley with a needle just before the alien attacked. Then later, in the Mess Hall, the alien may have sensed a potential threat to Ripley from Andrews and Aaron. Still doesn't explain why it didn't attack during the attempted rape scene though, but then it didn't know that she was carrying at that point. Mind you, it didn't when it attacked Clemens, it only found out after, when it went for her. So it's all most likely a big coincidence, I take back the begining of this post. The alien only switched to 'Queen Protection Mode' after it sensed the new Queen.

 Fantastic!!! Thanks Deezelboy! I personally love Dragonfly nymphs. The fact that they use hydraulics for ALL vigorous movements dovetails with my theory of alien locomotion. Thinking back to the times I've watched the nymphs in action (swimming, feeding etc. [I work as a gardener, and have to clean blanket weed from the ponds where I work, rescuing the little blighters as I go]), their movements make complete sense (jet propulsion was the thing that came to mind when I saw them punting along underwater)! They certainly have a vague resemblance to the aliens, not least in their attitude to other, similar sized animals. If anything could be a perfect predator, they'd be it!
 Come to think of it, the Chestburster is basically a nymph, it has most of the features of an adult alien, only incomplete. It metamorphoses by moulting (Incomplete metamorphosis), so yeah, it's a xenomorph nymph.
 Back on topic,  I had an idea while at work. What if the dorsal pipes are actually some form of pressure release valves? I remember seeing one of Giger's sketches showing one with smoke billowing out of them, so I wonder if, during periods of high activity, this actually would happen (smoke emanation, that is), to prevent the pressure buildup from becoming fatal. If they would use explosive reactions to generate pressure, a failsafe would always be required. It wouldn't do to over-exert oneself, and explode!
 

 Congratulations Thedus! It looks beautiful!!