
Protista
MemberOvomorphMar-06-2017 2:02 PMDo you think it is possible for an engineer and a human to reproduce and create offspring - a half engineer and half human hybrid? How would the mechanisms of this work? The engineers are very tall and I assume male engineers have a penis. I wonder how big it would be? Perhaps too big for a female human to accommodate? What about the physical characteristics of the offspring? What skin color would it have?

Inquisitor Fifield
MemberFacehuggerMar-06-2017 3:27 PMengineers have no genitalia anymore
and are evolved beyond a gender - hence lost the possibility to reproduce as a species.
so an offspring hybrid abomination with a human would probably look like someone that goes to LGBT rallies

dk
MemberTrilobiteMar-06-2017 3:31 PMIt doesn't sound anymore unreasonable than human black goo sperm impregnating someone with no eggs. Who says the engineer has to have sperm? Why not just blood?

Protista
MemberOvomorphMar-06-2017 4:29 PMIf engineers have no penis anymore, then I assume female engineers don't exist, which means that the engineers reproduce asexually? But there must have existed female engineers at some point in the past in order for the species to have come about, right? Also, if female engineers didn't exist, then why do human females exist, given that the engineers created us, where did the concept of female come? Did the engineers look like us thousands of years ago? And will we evolve to look like them in thousand of years too?

dk
MemberTrilobiteMar-06-2017 4:33 PMYou are getting into chromosomes.
There have been some threads about engineers reproduction but is best left to some of the heavy hitters on the forum.

Rick
MemberXenomorphMar-06-2017 4:44 PMNo genitals then why wear loin clothes? See the the beginning of Prometheus. Yes, humans and Engineers can mate. Remember we're a DNA match and thus the same species. Just like any species of human on earth can mate. Its minor differences/mutations in our DNA that make us different, but the same. Eye color, short, tall, skin pigment, hair color, big hands, small hands, etc. This is same for the engineers.

Protista
MemberOvomorphMar-06-2017 5:03 PMIf we're the same species, then we could technically mate. But what if we're not quite the same species, but the same genus / family etc - a more distant relative than species? I wonder if it's like asking if a human could mate with an ape. Although we descent from the apes, we've passed the evolutionary point where reproduction is possible with them? I mean, if you look at an engineer, it's physical characteristics are similar to humans in terms of proportion. But at the end of Prometheus, when the deacon busts out of the engineer's chest, you can see the engineer's heart beating - it doesn't look like a human heart at all. It's internal organs and possibly blood look very different to humans - possibly making any attempt at reproducing with humans impossible?!?

dk
MemberTrilobiteMar-06-2017 5:10 PMIt seems like it was assumed that Holloway's "seed" was sperm- but it was contaminated and the result resembled nothing human. So maybe semen was just a vessel for the goo and could have been with blood as well?
Rick mentioned the loin cloth which is valid but I would guess that was more to keep the movie rating where it was and/or the scene left in?

S.M
MemberXenomorphMar-06-2017 5:12 PMPretty sure that's the Deacon's placenta and not the Engineers heart. The Engineer would've been dead by the time the Deacon was born.
I'm not sure about genitalia, but Inquisitor Fifield is correct in that Ridley has said he believed they'd evolved beyond gender.

Protista
MemberOvomorphMar-06-2017 5:21 PMHmm are you sure it's the Deacon's placenta? I don't think it is - it was rhythmically beating like a heart. Do placentas do this?! I don't think they do!
So if the engineers have evolved beyond gender, they must reproduce by some other means. There's loads of ways they could do this then.

dk
MemberTrilobiteMar-06-2017 5:24 PMPlacentas or at least the umbilical chord continue to pulse. With all that thrashing it seems like the heart would have been shredded or crushed.

S.M
MemberXenomorphMar-06-2017 5:39 PMThere's really no room in the Engineers torso for any internal organs by the time the Deacon is born.
"Hmm are you sure it's the Deacon's placenta? I don't think it is - it was rhythmically beating like a heart. Do placentas do this?! I don't think they do!"
Guess Deacon ones do.