Inspired by this question...By cannibalistically, I mean that a full grown xeno crouches over an egg and lets it facehug him. Why in the world would this ever happen, when the reproduction is one to one, and you gain nothing?
If the egg is a queen. The queen is dead, so now you need a new one, but everything else you can facehug is either dead or has left the building. Have this scenario ever been addressed?
I know of no situations where it happened, but there are 2 problems to this.
The Aliens are hive minded, meaning they need their colony to thrive. If the queen is dead, they should get a new one. And they wouldn't step back to sacrifice one of their workers.
But what counters the above idea is the way face-hugger works.
A face-hugger attaches itself to a victim, penetrates its mouth and lays the egg inside.
For this to workout successfully, first of all the sheath should be long enough so the egg is placed in the food pipe beneath the neck and not left in the mouth area itself and then, the egg shell should be strong enough to counter Alien's digestive juices. But great many articles say Aliens can digest almost everything.
So my instincts say, the possibility of cannibalistic reproduction is near impossible.
The Xenomorph wouldn't need to do this. in the absence of a queen, a praetorian would become the queen. if there are no praetorians a regular drone or warrior would become the queen.
Xeno-Morph or "Alien form" or "Outside Form". The Alien biology seems to be mostly based around consuming part of the DNA of its host. If the host was another Xenomorph, the biology would likely have severe problems.
