Could Calvin eat a xenomorph?

Cafe Society
1

Just saw a dumb but fun horror movie, Life. Like the Alien pre-prequel, it featured fun aliens and dumb humans.

In Life, a martian called Calvin (seriously) eats people. It’s basically a smart flying starfish that is made of muscle cells that also serve as eyes. It’s strong, fast, fire-retardant, and hungry. It can survive outer space and pilot spaceships, along with eating and digesting rats within 5-10 seconds. It survives fire, suffocation, vacuum, electricity, plasma, blunt force trauma, and human insults.

On the other hand, we have our standby xenomorphs, exoskeletoned, double-jawed, acid-blooded with a penchant for breeding into humans. They’re also fast, strong, deadly, but not as hungry and not as inventive.

How could Calvin eat a xenomorph?

2

I haven’t seen Life but, from your description, it sounds like the things are pretty indestructible. Xenomorphs, as we have seen in the films, can be shot apart, torn apart, etc. They don’t seem to be any more durable than your average human (many of them are, in fact, human hybrids).

Basically, unless Calvin is susceptible to the acid, I don’t see any problem.

From the clip, it doesn’t look like Calvin has any orifices, so the one thing that the Xenomorphs have - the ability to take over a host and infect it - doesn’t seem applicable. Maybe the ferrous fluid that David infects people with, in Prometheus, would be fine enough to fit into some pore and take it over. But we’ve seen Xenomorphs touch people (e.g., Ripley) and not infect them, so it doesn’t seem to be that the black fluid is in Xenomorph sweat and spit.

3

If the back of vehicles are any clue, Calvin pees on things to soften them up first. :dubious:

There was nothing “fun” about Prometheus. I haven’t seen Life.

The Thing would eat them both.

4

Note that, while we’ve seen xenomorph blood eat through metal scaffolds and decks, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’d also eat through flesh: Organic materials are often less vulnerable to acids than metals are. And in fact, we know that there’s at least one kind of organic flesh that isn’t damaged by xenomorph blood.

And Sergeant Schlock would eat them both. The only thing he’s ever found himself unable to digest was an exceptionally-nasty weapon-grade nanite infection, and even that he was able to isolate and vomit out.

5

Matter-Eater Lad has them all for breakfast.

6

God, Life was a horrible movie.

7

I don’t know. I was hoping this going to be Calvin/Chuck Norris thread.

8

With tuna fish? I’d pit Spaceman Spiff against a xenomorph any day, as long as he had his trusty feline companion.

9

Calvin only was able to eat people because every person in that movie was stupid. Smart people wouldn’t have decided to play with the damn alien, and it wouldn’t have breached the first firewall.

10

I think Corporal Hicks and Private Drake of the United States Colonial Marine Corps would argue with this :wink:

11

Yeah, I really hate this new “dumb astronaut” trend in sci-fi. Mass media and politics have so normalized stupidity that we forget, at one time, we believed in selecting the best and brightest to represent us as explorers in space…