As established in every Predator film and across a number of extended-universe stories within the novels and the comics, Yautja love hunting humans, and that love always results in a great deal of people getting murdered in the most grisly ways imaginable with almost no way to adequately fight back–however, as revealed in one comic, it doesn’t have to be that way as there is one amazing secret weapon humans have had under their noses all along.
When considering every facet of Predator lore–including Alien vs Predator–Yautja have been coming to Earth to either hunt humans or use them for their ritualistic Xenomorph hunts since the dawn of man. The first time fans witnessed this was in 1987’s Predator where a Yautja was hunting a team of highly-trained mercenaries before eventually being bested by one. Then, another Predator came to Earth in Predator 2 to hunt within the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. After that, a group of Predators abducted humans to hunt them on an off-world preserve, before returning to Earth again to unveil a never-before-seen Super Predator. Most recently, the franchise decided to go back in time and tell an earlier story of a Predator hunting humans on Earth in the film Prey–a movie that comes the closest to utilizing this ‘secret weapon’ that was explicitly shown to be instrumental in an Alien vs Predator comic.
Humanity’s Secret Weapon Against Predators are Dogs
In Aliens vs Predator #2 by Randy Stradley and Phill Norwood, a horde of Xenomorphs have secretly been imbedded within the off-world human colony of Prosperity Wells by a team of Predators who were undergoing their culture’s Blooding Ritual (a rite of passage they must go through that requires a Predator to kill a Xenomorph). At this point in the story, the Xenomorphs are hiding in a ship’s loading dock, so the humans aren’t aware of their existence. Simultaneously, Predators are walking among the humans with their cloaking devices on–surveying the area and looking for their ultimate prey. Then, seemingly out of nowhere from the perspective of the human settlers, one of their dogs starts barking incessantly before running outside and attacking what appeared to be nothing at all. As the dog bit and clawed this vaguely humanoid form of shimmering light, the Predator’s cloaking device got damaged, and the intergalactic warrior was revealed before a group of shocked and horrified humans.
The dog in this comic was able to sense the Predator even when it was camouflaged–something humans obviously cannot do. At the beginning of practically every Predator movie, a number of people are taken out simply because they can’t see the thing hunting them. The camouflage tech is easily the most useful in the Predator’s arsenal, but if a team of humans had a trained pack of dogs among them, that tool would be rendered useless to the Predator.
Prey was the only Predator movie that utilized a dog for hunting purposes, and the fact that it survived till the end of the movie while helping its human survive as well only goes to show how resourceful and useful dogs can be when battling a Predator–even if this particular pup didn’t disrupt the Predator’s shimmer like the one from this AvP comic book did. Either way, the one thing has been made abundantly clear is that dogs are the perfect secret weapon to use against Predators–and humans haven’t even fully realized it yet.
