Hoping to learn more about the Alien wasp, researchers pulled a range of data that showed its endemic throughout much of the Eastern United States. The larvae are laid inside or on the bodies of fruit flies, at which point they grow and burst outwards after draining all of the available nutrients.

Xenomorphia is an extinct genus of parasitoid wasp comprising two species: X. resurrecta (the type species) and X. handschini. The generic name is in reference to the parasitic Xenomorph creature starring in the Alien franchise.

Mississippi scientists have discovered a new species of wasp that lays eggs in living flies so the babies burst out of their bellies, Nature reports. “At the time we didn’t think it was real,” the study’s lead author Logan Moore, a biologist at Mississippi State University, told Live Science.

“Of the type of wasp we looked at, there are 1,700 described species worldwide, and about 109 in the UK. We found, on just one mountain in the rainforest, 98 species of these wasps, three quarters of which could not be named.