XENOMORPH WASP

Remember the film Alien? The title character, Xenomorph, injects its embryo into the body of an astronaut. A few days later ... BAM! A baby alien pops out of the poor guy’s chest. Well, about a year ago a researcher in Australia discovered a wasp that injects its eggs into its victim, such as a moth caterpillar. As the eggs grow, they consume the caterpillar’s insides until they burst out of its body as fully formed larvae. It doesn’t end there. Sometimes the caterpillar survives in a zombified state, doomed to live out its life protecting the new communal cocoon until the day the larvae emerge as wasps. The researcher, obviously a sci-fi fan, dubbed the wasp the Dolichogenidea xenomorph. Think of it as another sequel in the Alien canon.