How? I see very little resemblance between a gonome and a gonarch, whereas I do see an obvious resemblance between a headcrab on its own and a gonarch. Why would the stage go quadruped to biped host back to quadruped again? Plus, this would mean that headcrabs would need humans on Xen to mutate into a gonarch, which would make no sense.
My guess is that gonarchs are created in a similar way to queen ants and queen bees, i.e. juvenile headcrabs will be fed a special diet to make them sexually mature.
But they are fed by who?
Of course, I believe that what we saw on HL was a restricted part of Xen. There can be lots of xenians species that we don’t saw.
Personally, I think that the gonarch is an advanced stage of the evolution of the zombies. Why? Headcrabs feeds on humans and start mutating they organic systems.
Like this: that mouth of the zombies, in the future, is going to create some sort of tissue that will house the host’s internal organs - modified, of course. The arms and legs could keep themselves continually growing.
But, there’s a point: how the gonarch got that armor? If I remember, the only vulnerability of the monster was it’s reproductive sack.
ah, I don’t know. Tried.
XEN doesn’t be a name of a planet,solar-like system,galaxy,or nebular.
But I think that it is a name of another dimension, same position in 3D-coordinate to the earth but in different position of forth(or fifth)-coordinate.
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V
We do see them drop fast and poison headcrabs. 
As far as Gonarchs go, I doubt it has much to do with zombies, as there weren’t any humans on Xen before very recently. Although, maybe their instinct for zombification comes from attaching to something else, and the gonome is the result of trying to develop using the wrong type of host?
Zombies do not have to be human!!! Do you think that headcrabz suddenly realised they were able to do that when humans appeareD?
That’s what I meant. They probably did something similar to something else before they encountered humans. But the result may not have been zombification - it depends on what their original hosts were.
Alyx will make another motherfuckin’ joke and will introduce
the vortigaunt-zombie = ZORTİE!
alien grunt-zombie
Alien Mushroom-zombie
Polar bear Zombie
advisor-zombie
houndeye-zombie
ANY GOD DAMN THİNG YOU CAN İMAGİNE!!!
I think that the reason why most of the headcrabs on earth are so confused and disorganized is because they don’t have any contact with a “queen” or gonarch as the case may be, if we’re going with the theory that they function like ants.
If they also have multiple sub-species like the ants do, then we can assume that the regular head crabs are the drones, which might use their ability to control a host’s nervous system to take control of a host and take it back to the nest for food for the queen or other headcrabs.
The fast headcrabs destroy their hosts body for the most part, making them poorly suited for foraging, but their agility lends them superior combat abilities, making them much like soldier ants.
As for the poison headcrabs, their neuro-toxins would benefit the hive by poisoning and subduing larger opponents.
Apologies in advance if anyone else made these exact points, I kinda skimmed the thread.
Just my musings on the topic.
I’ll have to agree with Coozins on this one, I see little resemblance between a (human) zombie and a Gonarch. I suppose it’s possible, but I guess this is just something we’ll have to agree to disagree on.
I actually think it’s much more likely that the Gonarch could possibly be the result of a headcrab coupling with another Xenian creature of some sort (probably followed by long years of eating/sleeping/growing/etc.) rather than with a human, as has already been suggested. I mean, judging by size alone (which isn’t necessarily accurate I suppose, but just roll with me here for a sec 
) the Gonarch from HL1 had probably existed for a number of Earth years, (before Gordon effectively ended it,) so whatever it had bonded with (assuming it bonded with anything at all, in the course of its life) most likely wasn’t human.
But… we do see them… at least, I think we did… didn’t we…? Maybe I’m remember wrong, but I thought that there were a few instances of mortar use where poison or fast headcrabs popped out (or where it was implied that poison or fast headcrabs had been housed inside, through indication of a poison/fast zombie lurking near a vacant mortar or something). At least, I think so…
Lost Coast had poison headcrabs pop out of the mortars in the church, if I remember correctly. And Episode One had that sea-faring shipping crate near the end of the game that Gordon was crawling through, which the strider blew up, causing the mortars that were inside with Gordon to open up, revealing two poison headcrabs (again, if I’m remembering correctly… I could just be bullshitting this, but I’m pretty sure there were poison guys in there). I think I also recall a mortar hitting a building somewhere in Episode One which revealed a few fast headcrabs, but again, clearly I need to play the game(s) again to make sure…
…and i see a resemblance between a headcrab and Xen funghi
I tried to do something similar, but for all Xenofauna species. The entry I made for headcrabs went like this:
I suppose, although I do feel that there must be some link between zombification and gonarch development, otherwise the whole life cycle seems to be off kilter. Bear in mind that while a zombie bears no resemblance to a gonarch, the headcrab is still very much intact. Is it not unthinkable that the headcrab assimilate and reform material from the host?
Nope, not unthinkable at all, in fact it’s entirely possible. Who knows, we could see evidence of that in EP3, if Valve decides to take things in that direction. I just didn’t personally interpret it that way while playing through the series so far, I guess.
In real Earth nature, there are plenty of examples of creatures bonding together (although the processes aren’t necessarily as “dramatic” as the headcrab bonding process…) for mutual benefit. My guess is that this is what the headcrab was accustomed to doing prior to reaching Xen/Earth: Bonding with something else from its homeworld (since supposedly nothing is native to Xen) for the purpose of mutual benefit and growth. The Gonarch has a certain symmetry to it, suggesting to me that it could possibly be the result of what “should” happen in nature on its homeworld. On the other hand, when a headcrab bonds with a human, the overall process isn’t nearly as symmetrical (at least not at first… judging by the mutation of the human’s arms) and overall, seems (to me, at least) to be far more degenerative, rather than productive or beneficial, to both parties involved. (Especially considering the fact that the headcrabs, after bonding with a human, really only accomplish the feat of make themselves bigger and more vulnerable targets to a particularly deadly crowbar-weilding, zombie-hating predator. :freeman 
The more I think about it, the more I’m actually convinved that humans are probably something headcrabs were never intended to bond with, and that the grisly end result is simply due to a lack of a genetic compatibility between the host and the headcrab, a genetic compatibility that the “right” creature most likely has with headcrabs. As for why headcrabs bond with humans, and supposedly not with Vorts, (though this may change in the future) who knows? It could be something as simple as similar pheromones between humans and the headcrabs’ typical host, or, maybe you are right, and maybe headcrabs just bond with whatever the heck they feel like, humans included, in order to reorganize their hosts’ DNA and use the extra tissue mass for their own benefit. It could go either way, I think.
All I really know for certain, is that I wouldn’t want one on my head!
(…random thought… we totally need a :headcrabbed: smiley!! 
)
It did, near the end of hl2 ep1, there is a containment full of headcrab shell, when the strider attack the containment, the headcrab shell release full of fast headcrab.
For poison headcrab, you must play Half-Life 2: Lost coast, in the church where you must destroy the headcrab shell cannon, when you does, it will release poison headcrab.
Edit: damn ninja.
We never find poison or fast variations in abundance amongst the headcrab population anyway. Even ignoring HL1, vanilla headcrabs still outnumber their mutated counterparts.
o_O i thought that…
headcrab + host = zombie + time/exposure to headcrab’s mutagen = gonarch
and…
fast/poison headcrabs = biological weaponry made by the combine to fight the resistance