A chestburster, or chest-burster, is the third stage of development in the life-cycle of an alien xenomorph following egg and facehugger. Having incubated inside the chest cavity of a living host, the infant xenomorph births itself by literally bursting through the body of the host, killing it in the process. The maturation process of the newborn xenomorph is exceedingly fast at this point. Within the span of only a few hours, the chestburster will grow to its full size as either a drone or a queen. A mature queen may reproduce asexually, laying an egg, which when fertile, will yield a parasitic facehugger, which will attach itself to a host form and go through a gestation period, thus repeating the cycle.
Bellyburster[]
A bellyburster is functionally the same as a chestburster except that they exit the host body from the abdomen rather than the chest. It appears that this difference in birthing locale is exclusive to a Xenomorph/Yautja hybrid colloquially known as a "Predalien". One Predalien of note, who escaped to Earth in 2004, was capable of delivering Xenomorph embryos directly from its own body to the host form, effectively bypassing the facehugger stage. One point of commonality amongst its victims, is that they were all women, and that they were all in late-stage pregnancy to begin with. The Predalien produced embryos directly into the host's mouth, and following a short gestation period, the Xenomorph offspring would burst from the body, killing both its host and their unborn child. Carrie Adams was one such victim of a bellyburster. [1]
Notes[]
- Chest-burster, Chest-bursters, and Chestbursters all redirect to this page.
- Bellyburster and Bellybursters both redirect to the "Bellyburster" section of this article.
See also[]
Aliens |
Predator |