Male/Female Headcrabs?

[losermeetsworld]

Lookie here.

Just for shits and giggles, I was fighting the Gonarch again, and I noticed that the little baby crabs it spits out have the same kind of sac under their bellies that the Gonarch does... So it got me thinking, why do they have the sac instead of a hole like normal crabs do? These ARE normal crabs, since we know that crabs grow into Gonarchs. So I'm thinking, maybe these little crabs are females, and the headhumper crabs that you see are the males, and the Combine harvest them as weapons, and leave the more useless female crabs behind? That explains why few ever become Gonarchs... Without the males they can't reproduce to make Gonarchs.

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

Intresting....That does make a lot of sense. But I really have no idea.

 

[highlander]

u look at headcrabs in those areas?!?!

 

[Digamma]

I've never thought of that...but then, where are the male headcrabs. They should also come from the Gonarch cus i really doubt there is a giant male head crab spitting out little male headcrabs. But then again, it is Xen...

 

[losermeetsworld]

Just like bees, the queen ONLY lays female eggs and the female drones produce a few males to mate with the queen. So maybe all those big pods with four legs, the ones that you shoot and instead of a normal bollet hole a wound pops out, maybe those are cells where the drones are growing males to start reproducing... After all, I doubt that the creatures on Xen had been there long, so that makes sense as to why the Gonarch is so grossely pregnant and there are so many pods, they are just getting ready to start a colony.

where are the male headcrabs.

The Combine harvest them all and use them as weapons, ex: headcrab shells, Ravenholm, ect.

 

[<RJMC>]

what if those baby headcrabs hav nutrients in those sacs?and they consume it whit the time?
and the big sac of the gonarch is just the egg maker?
there are real animals who do that like frogs babies and octopus

 

[Puzzlemaker]

Interesting theory!

 

[Que-Ever]

what if those baby headcrabs hav nutrients in those sacs?and they consume it whit the time?
and the big sac of the gonarch is just the egg maker?
there are real animals who do that like frogs babies and octopus

like a carry-on yolk

 

[esplin]

I sense a Garry's Mod movie coming out of this thread.

But seriously, I always thought the "sac" on the baby headcrabs was their brain.
Once the headcrab begins to grow the sac disappears because the brain will now fit in the body.

 

[ríomhaire]

I'd say that the sack is just full of food, like an egg.

 

[Darkside55]

It's always been my idea that they're simply born like that for no specific reason, and the "eggsack" receedes into the body as they grow up. The nutrient theory is pretty good though...that makes a lot of sense.

 

[Digamma]

ya its probably a yolk. they are definetly too small to eat(let alone kill) anything on xen.

 

[Danimal]

It's like a yolk in an egg, it's to nourish the headcrab until it's matured enough to take a host.

And no, there is no known difference of gender for headcrabs. Once it takes a host it will eat some foods then gestate into a Gonome, then what happens is unknown, but I bet it gestates once more into another Gonarch and poop out more babies, then the cycle starts again.

I forgot where, but there was going to be a part in HL2 where you see a captured Gonarch producing baby after baby. I don't think it made the cut.

 

[Geneerinen]

ok this might sound stupid and childish, but in HL2, i saw a normal headcrab huming one of those black poisonous headcrabs. it was in the mines that come after the shotgun dude leads you through that graveyard.

i was walking on some ceiling beams and looked down and saw the headcrabs mating in a corner. true story. might be some sort of system bug, with the "male" crab repeating the same animation on and on, but it sure as hell looked like they were mating.

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

I doubt that they were meant to do that. There is a shitload of headcrabs down there, so it's very possible for a glitch like that to happen.

 

[Flyingdebris]

headcrabs are probably asexual, mr. laidlaw may see fit to elaborate more upon them in the future so no matter what we say, nothing is definite