The Xenomorphs of Alien and the Yautja of Predator are tied together in a cosmic dance that potentially goes back eons and spans the entire galaxy, yet somehow, they are perfect opposites, and one comic explains why.
The Predators spread Xenomorphs across the galaxy, as the Yautja have a vested interest in ensuring the Xenomorphs never go extinct. The Predators practice a rite of age known as the Blooding Ritual which dictates a Predator (or team of Predators) have to kill Xenomorphs and then use their acid blood to brand themselves with the mark of their clan. Once this mark is earned, the Yautja becomes recognized as a legitimate hunter. Since killing Xenomorphs is so embedded in their culture, Predators make it their mission to populate different moons and planets across the starways with Xenomorph life. More recently, the Predators have had help in this department. Humans have been unwilling participants in the Xenomorphs’ interplanetary expansion since coming across the creatures, which is the very premise of the comic that confirms Xenomorphs and Predators are opposites.
Xenomorphs Don’t Actively Hunt Their Prey, Making them the Opposite of Predators
In Aliens: Fire and Stone #2 by Chris Roberson and Patric Reynolds, a group of humans is trying to survive on the hostile moon, LV-223, after arriving there from LV-426. These people were the last survivors of Hadley’s Hope (minus Newt) who were able to get off LV-426 when the Xenomorphs attacked. Unfortunately, the Xenomorphs they were running from secretly boarded the ship in the cargo hold, only to reemerge when the ship landed. Just like that, these humans infected another world with Xenomorph life, just like the Predators have done for generations. The only difference, however, is that the humans had no way to kill these creatures, which is why it was a good thing the Xenomorphs weren’t actively hunting them.
After months of living on LV-223 with no sign of rescue and with no real way to defend themselves, the humans learned how to avoid the Xenomorph horde. Their method was actually quite simple: stay out of the Xenomorphs’ line of sight (or the Xenomorphs’ eyeless equivalent). So long as the Xenomorphs didn’t come across the humans, they wouldn’t bother them. In fact, the aliens were so ively interested in them that the survivors could be hiding in the trees above a horde of Xenos running past them and not be in any danger. Clearly, this is the opposite of how Predators operate. Predators travel across the galaxy in search of their prey, and even go so far as to seed planets themselves to hunt their ultimate prey later. Therefore, if Predators were stuck on the same planet as a group of people they wanted to kill, there would be nowhere the survivors could hide where the Predators wouldn’t find them.
Xenomorphs attack humans to eliminate any threat to their hive, or to abduct a viable host. This means the Xenomorphs have no reason to go out of there way to kill humans if those humans weren’t actively threatening them, or there weren’t any Facehuggers to offer the humans to (which there weren’t at the time). Sure, Xenomorphs are more than proficient at killing people when they have reason to, but the aliens don’t eat (at least, they don’t need to eat) and they have no inherent desire to hunt. Because of this, Alien confirms how Xenomorphs are the total opposite of Predators, despite how close the two species have always been.
