Nuts

The 1979 film Alien is currently on BBC iPlayer, so I've watched (half, so far) it one more time. It holds up very well across 45 years. Some of the sci-fi effects look a little clunky (fast-scrolling ones and zeroes on a monochrome screen as an indicator of computer power), but it was never primarily a sci-fi movie - it's a psycho-sexual, scary-monster horror story, where a confined, isolated space-ship happens to be a convenient setting

The scary monster was designed by a Swiss surrealist artist (H R Giger), whose work represents human-mechanical hybrids, but in the scenes where it first appears in 'juvenile' forms, I see strong echoes of real-world organisms. John Hurt is first attacked (raped, in the iconography of the film) by something reminiscent of a horseshoe crab, maybe with a touch of trilobite, and he subsequently 'gives birth' to something that raises the same feeling of uneasiness as the blind mole rat. The lack of eyes was important in making it more scary, according to Ridley Scott
 
Every year, a few of the hazlenuts have these small holes in. I've always assumed it was an insect, but never been curious enough to dig deeper. This year, the proportion with holes is higher - enough to provoke me to find out more. This is the work of a nut wevil (Curculio nucum) - a small insect only 5mm or so long. The females have a long proboscis - longer than their body - poking out at the front. If that was not comical enough, their antennae are attached, not to their head per se, but to the shaft of the proboscis, making them look as if they have a 1960s television aerial affixed on the front

They use the proboscis to penetrate the soft shell of a young nut in June, and deposit an egg. This hatches into a larva, which feeds on the nut (destroying it) and then eats its way outwards through the shell, leaving this hole, like the one in John Hurt's chest. The larva falls to the floor and over-winters in the soil, pupating and metamorphosing into an adult next summer, to begin the cycle again

I've never knowingly seen a nut wevil, but I now definitely hope to and will look out for one next June. The video here uses one for its comedy value, but I definitely think that any successor to Ridley Scot, looking for scary-monster inspiration, could do worse than start with this as a model