Facehugger (Earth-5875)

"Woke up gagging on a creature — like a spider. It wrapped around my face. It's dead, sir."

- - Private Bella Clarison to Captain Jeremy Cruz

The Facehugger is one of the forms of the sapient xenomorph endoparasitoids, being the second stage of its life cycle, hatching from an Ovomorph. It is extremely short-lived, and exists merely to implant a Chestbuster within a potential host through the victim's mouth. Beyond its acid spit, a Facehugger has no real offensive capability other than aggressively jumping towards its prey, using both stealth and immobilization of the victim to implant the Chestbuster. After a Facehugger implants the Chestbuster, it dies shortly after.

Anatomy and physiology
Facehuggers resemble a pair of skeleton-like hands fused together, with a tail that resembles a spine, or a scorpion. The creature has eight finger-like long legs that allow it to move at incredibly fast speeds, as well as a tail adapted for leaping. This gives them an appearance similar to that of Earth's Chelicerata arthropod subdivision, such as arachnids and horseshoe crabs. Beneath the Facehugger lies it orifice, which they use to impregnate their victims with Chestbusters, largely resembling a female human's vagina.

The lower digits of a Facehugger grants them the ability to move quickly through any surface, from the ground to walls, as well as its capability of "gripping" the head of a host so it can implant its Chestbuster. Despite being rather skinny in appearance, the digits are strong, and are known to tear the skin from skulls, even those of the sangheili and jiralhanae, as well as successfully remove a SPARTAN-II's MJOLNIR helmet. Once the creature is able to grip around the head of its host, removal is nearly impossible and impregnation is almost a guarantee, unless the victim is physically strong enough to remove it. As such, species such as humans, unggoy, kig-yar and san'shyuum are not able to escape implantation, while others such as sangheili and jiralhanae potentially can if they are not caught off-guard. A Facehugger can also use its tail to strangle their hosts when they attempt to remove them, which leads to many deaths before the impregnation even begins. Much like other xenomorphs, their blood is acidic green, and can severely wound a victim or anyone who attempts to attack them. They are beige in color, differently from their usually all-black xenomorph brethren.