The Predator Will Trust Any Human Who Does One Thing

Predators are willing to let their human prey live if that human does one thing (which is arguably more difficult than just fighting the Predator).

While it is well-known that Predators love hunting humans, there is one sure-fire way to not be hunted by the Yautja–though it’s a bit more difficult than simply not carrying a weapon.

As established in the first Predator film, a Yautja will not hunt someone if they aren’t wielding any weapons–but in the Predator stories that have been released since then, that rule hasn’t exactly held up. In the most recent Predator storyline, Marvel Comics’ Predator, a Yautja slaughters an entire colony of botanists–arguably the least problematic kind of scientists, especially in science fiction. This colony wasn’t, say, a guerrilla army camp being infiltrated by mercenaries (which was the setting of the first movie), so the Predators had no reason to assume these people were worthy prey as they did not regularly carry weapons. But, that didn’t stop the Yautja from murdering nearly every one of them, which all but disproved the Predators’ code of honor in regard to the ‘weapons rule’. With that method of safety from Predators debunked, the only other way to not be killed by a Predator is if a human is already dying of a terminal illness or injury, at which point they become unworthy prey. However, ‘already dying’ isn’t a great alternative to being killed by a Predator since, well, that person is already dying. These two ways of avoiding being murdered by a Yautja may sometimes work, but neither are a guaranteed way to survive a Predator–not like this other method that is tried and true in Predator lore.

Related: Predators Secretly Explain How Xenomorphs Spread Across The Universe

Killing a Xenomorph is the One Way to Earn a Predator’s Trust

In Alien vs Predator: Civilized Beasts by Mike Kennedy and Roger Robinson, a group of humans are stuck on a distant world that is crawling with Xenomorphs and Predators. While this immediately sounds like a death sentence, it actually seems to not be as bad as one might think. Given the prevalence of Xenomorph life on the planet, the Predators who travel there are most likely only there to participate in their Blooding Ritual–a rite of passage where a Predator must kill a Xenomorph in order to reach full maturity as a hunter. The Blooding Ritual is specific to Xenomorphs, which means the humans who accidentally showed up here are pretty safe. Obviously, the threat of Xenomorph attacks is constant, but that’s why a team of humans decided to take the fight to them and hunt Xenomorphs just as the Yautja are doing.

After a few successful Xenomorph hunts on the humans’ part, the Predators started to pay them their due respect, as the humans were unwittingly participating in the Blooding Ritual and were thereby proving their worth as hunters in the Yautja culture–and this wasn’t the first time this happened. In the first AvP comic book series, Aliens vs Predator, a woman named Machiko Noguchi found herself in a similar situation as the humans in this comic, and she, too, hunted Xenomorphs to ensure her own survival. By the end of Aliens vs Predator, Machiko was actually invited to join the Predator clan and even hunt alongside them while traveling the cosmos.

While the humans in Civilized Beasts didn’t take their relationships with the Predators that far, Machiko’s story is just another example of how a human can avoid being killed by a Predator simply by killing Xenomorphs. Unfortunately, killing a Xenomorph isn’t as easy as these books might make it out to be (they are the ‘perfect organism’ after all), so the idea that one has to kill a deadly creature just to avoid getting hunted by another is a pretty raw deal. But, when considering survival in the face of a Predator hunt, that’s the best deal one is going to get, as the Predator will trust any human who kills a Xenomorph.

More: Predator Confirms the Yautja’s Worst Enemy (& it’s Not Who You Think)