This paper is a thorough examination of the physiology of the presumed adult Martian being, as well as a speculative document on the origins, behaviors, and motivations of said beings.
Before we begin, we must establish a few conventions:
“Martian,” throughout this paper, refers to the beings that arrived on Earth on November 8th, 2017 from Mars, and does not refer to their probable or speculative planetary origin.
“Bloodbag,” a term borrowed from multiple reports of sightings of the same or similar creatures, refers to the bloated, apparently juvenile Martian variants carried with the main thrust of the Martian work force to this planet.
“Red Weed,” throughout this paper, refers to the purple-red biomechanical growths brought by the Martians to Earth, intentionally or unintentionally.
An informal style may be used at times, due to the nature and constraints of the dissection, which was performed as professionally and scientifically as possible given the circumstances.
We’re doing our best.
Basic Measurements
The Martian we examined, presumed adult, is about 6.5′ from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail. It is 4′7″ tall at its highest point, and 4′4″ wide at its widest point.
The Martian Exterior
The Martian is a large, slimy creature made mostly of water. Its biology mirrors Earth standards in some ways, and deviates spectacularly in others. It has two eyes on the round end of its teardrop-shaped body that mirror those of the nautilus - thin plates with a fairly simple retina. If I had to guess I’d say the eye isn’t far divorced from the eye of an aquatic ancestor. Its mouth is concealed by a cartilaginous flap of skin, referred to hereafter as the “beak.” On either side of its mouth are three whiplike tentacles, six in total, about an inch thick and four feet long, which appear to be able to extend and retract as the Martian sees fit. These have a strong grip and are used to manipulate objects with a precision and strength the human hand cannot approach. On either side of those is a single flipper, continuous with the rest of the body and similar in structure to the tail. Though this is technically bilateral symmetry, it’s easy to see why, looking at a Martian, they chose to design their machines with three legs rather than any other amount.
Martian skin is about three inches thick, made almost entirely of fatty tissue engorged with moisture. The skin is porous and excretes mucus or a similarly-functioning substance.
The Martian’s mechanism of movement is threefold. A weak muscle along the underside of the creature, similar to a gastropodal belly-foot, helps slowly propel the Martian along. Its flippers seem to allow it greater upward and downward mobility, and its front tentacles may also serve a purpose in locomotion.
The Martian has a single ear atop the crest of its head. This ear is dead center and faces toward the front of the creature. In my opinion the tympanum of this ear is too thin to function in our air.
Much of the Martian’s brain is visible through a layer of thinner skin running along its back. This skin is more elastic than the rest, seemingly to allow for brain growth and movement.
The Martian appears to lack an anus, urethra, or any orifice through which waste might be disposed. As far as we can tell, the Martian does not generate any waste due to its unique interior physiology.
The Martian Interior
Martians have three major interior structures: the lung, the brain, and the circulatory system. All Martian nervous structures other than the brain are thinner than even human nervous structures, despite the obvious implications of our size difference. Martians have no skeleton, but instead deposits of cartilage that help keep the body in one shape while allowing for flexibility.
The Martian has a single lung, taking up most of the lower half of its body. The lung is the only attachment to the mouth; there is no digestive system. Martians seem to breathe solely through their mouth.
Above the lung is the brain, which is significantly more complicated than that of a human. It is asymmetrical, perhaps explaining the flexible membrane cradling it. The left side seems to have at the very least thirty-eight separate lobes, while the right side appears to have forty-two. Although the Bloodbag is an abnormal specimen, its lobe count is much lower, and symmetrical, suggesting tamperment of some kind in the adult Martian - perhaps genetic engineering.
Underneath the lung, cradled by cartilage, is the Martian heart, a seven-chambered monstrosity about six inches all around, the centerpiece of a circulatory system unlike any seen on Earth. The Martian circulatory system looks almost more like an intestine, with myriad nutrient-absorbing constructs coating the walls of veins and arteries a full inch in diameter.
The Bloodbag
What we, and the press, are calling a “Bloodbag” is an either juvenile or stunted variation of the Martian species. It is about three feet around and much more globular than the adult Martian’s teardrop shape. Its brain is significantly smaller, with the main anatomical feature being its complicated, almost seemingly designed circulatory system. It has reduced surface structures - simple, almost fetal eyes, a single sphincter-like hole for a mouth, and nubs where the flippers are on the adult Martian.
The Bloodbag’s body is covered in artificial puncture marks that lead directly into its veins. Certain parts of its exterior seem to be more scab tissue than skin.
It is our opinion, based on both this evidence and certain reports of Martian behavior, that these Bloodbag Martians are a subspecies utilized or maybe even intentionally bred to act as incubators for nutrient-rich blood. Frequent injections of raw nutrients are processed by the Bloodbag’s advanced circulatory system, saving Martian worker tissue from the stress and wear-and-tear of nutrient breakdown and allowing nutrients to mix naturally into warm, rich blood ready for transfusion.
This seems to be the main method, or maybe only method, of feeding the Martians have. Their advanced bloodstream directly assimilates nutrients and distributes them throughout the body, with the bulk of this energy-intensive work being hoisted onto the Bloodbags. Between this and the fact that they have no digestive system, the Martians are almost perfectly efficient, wasting no energy on non-fundamental bodily tasks.
Red Weed
The Red Weed is a definitive biomechanical grouping of cells acting as a single cell with many nuclei. Its genetic material is almost entirely artificial, bearing little resemblance to what we know as DNA or RNA and appearing more like an eventual descendant of our nanotechnology. Tiny silicon fibers are woven together to create something that acts and replicates itself like DNA, but can be manipulated to a degree we have not yet achieved to perform seemingly impossible tasks. Some of this silicon enhancement is prominent in Martian and Bloodbag genetic material as well.
The Red Weed seems to have two functions, the first being to spread itself continuously with little more than water to sustain itself, and the second being to endlessly perpetuate a (simple, yet totally unprecedented in nature or modern chemistry) chemical reaction that creates a huge amount of heated air. Non-lethal amounts of hydrogen cyanide gas are the byproduct of this reaction. The Red Weed, given its synthetic nature, was undoubtedly consciously placed on Earth by the Martians in an attempt to mimic an environment that suits them, the way we might spread a carpet of green over an alien snowball world to try and heat it up to our liking. Martians apparently desire a moist, humid, warm climate, which is consistent with our observations of their physiology.
It is likely that the Martians have been emulating this environment under the Martian surface for a significant amount of time, waiting until what they perceived as the right moment to attack Earth and commandeer its resources. We cannot ignore the possibility, even probability, that humankind is one of those resources. Our blood is just as nutritionally rich as any Bloodbag’s, and some disturbing reports of Martians using sharp tools on human beings would indicate that these kinds of cross-species transfusions are in fact happening.