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Love him or hate him (or both), there's no denying that Kyubey is one of Puella Magi Madoka Magica's most iconic and memorable characters.
Initially presented as the quintessential mascot who contracts girls to fight witches, Kyubey is eventually revealed to be a member of an alien race known as the Incubators who created the magical girl system for their own sinister purposes.
Despite playing such a pivotal role in both the original series and the extended PMMM canon, remarkably little is known for certain about the Incubators as a species. This is not necessarily a bad thing--not only is the practice of leaving certain details to the imagination a longstanding and effective horror trope, it also allows for a wide variety of interpretations and story possibilities in fanworks. However, what little we do see of the Incubators offers tantalizing hints about their biology, enough to construct some surprisingly detailed accounts of their possible evolutionary history.
A Field Guide to Incubators
Let's start with the assumption that the Incubator bodies we see in canon are a) biological in nature, and b) representative of their original ancestral form to some degree. Let's also assume that the law of physics, chemistry, and biology on their home planet are the same as they are on earth, allowing us to draw direct comparisons from terrestrial life. This means that even though Kyubey belongs to a unique evolutionary lineage not found on Earth, we can still deduce useful information about the Incubators by comparing their bodies to those of various Earth creatures exhibiting analogous structures due to convergent evolution, in which similar features evolve in otherwise unrelated species due to similar evolutionary pressures and challenges.
Outside of snowy environments, animals with pure white coloration tends to be rare, as it is easy for predators to detect them against dark backgrounds. As a result, pure white-colored individuals--often the result of a genetic condition known as leucism--within a given population are usually less likely to survive to adulthood and perpetuate their genes. If all Incubators have naturally white fur, this suggests that they were not subjected to the same pressures of natural selection--possibly because they had few natural predators to begin with, or because they were able to avoid detection from predators thanks to their considerable psychic abilities.
While some Earth species appear white due to leucophores--specialized structures that reflect light are themselves colorless--given that Incubators also have red eyes, they are likely albinos lacking pigments throughout their entire body. Like leucism, albinism makes organisms more vulnerable to predators, and it also increases susceptibility to UV light, resulting in a higher risk of mutation and cancers (and therefore premature death before the affected individuals can reproduce). However, if the Incubators' homeworld receives little sunlight--if it were far enough from its sun that little light penetrated the atmosphere, or if it was perpetually shrouded with thick clouds--than any protective benefits of pigments would be irrelevant and albinism could potentially spread throughout the entire population.
Alternatively, perhaps the Incubators or their ancestors were never exposed to sunlight because they lived underground. Many cave-dwelling populations on Earth are similarly colorless, including a form of the Mexican tetra (Astyanax mexicanus) and the olm (Proteus anguinus), an aquatic European salamander. In both of these examples, cave-dwelling species have lost their eyes but developed heightened other senses to compensate--thus providing another possible explanation for how the ancestral Incubators developed telepathy in the first place.
In an interesting coincidence, the olm retains its external gills--which resemble Kyubey's distinctive "ears"--into adulthood, unlike other salamanders, who shed them once past the larval stage of their development. This condition, known as neoteny, is shared with another salamander species, the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), which is perhaps best known for its incredible ability to regenerate entire limbs and restore damaged organs, which is the closest terrestrial equivalent to Kyubey's ability to generate new bodies. Kyubey is often compared to various mammals--cat, rabbit, rat, etc--but perhaps a salamander is more accurate. It makes me wonder if the Incubators that we see are juveniles/neotenized adults, and, if so, what their true adult form might look like.
Though Kyubey's physical bodies appear to follow a basic vertebrate body plan, with four limbs, a tail, a face, etc, etc, it's unclear to what extent his internal biology reflects this. The one shot we see of Kyubey's insides in the original series does not depict any bones or distinct organs, only a uniform red mass, which may be the result of the animators deliberately sacrificing anatomical accuracy for to accommodate TV censorship. However, the Null Magical Girl light novel spinoff claims that a clump of outwardly unassuming Incubator cells can perform the same functions as a human brain, implying that they are analogous to pluripotent or totipent stem cells in humans, except that Incubator cells may not even need to differentiate in order to mimic specific organ function.
Regardless of how Kyubey's nervous system works (or if he has one to begin with), he certainly acts like he's in pain when Homura wings him--but how much of that is a deliberate ruse to gain Madoka's sympathy is up for debate. Certainly, he also seems to enjoy a hot soak in Madoka's bathroom, suggesting that he can also experience pleasure, but again, it's unclear how much of this is an effort to appear cute and harmless by mimicking typical animal behavior. Given his behavior throughout the series, I think Kyubey can feel these kinds of physical sensations, but he mutes their impact in a manner similar to magical girls (more on this below), so that he only experiences as much as is personally convenient at any given time.
Kyubey is never shown to need to eat, but he does eagerly accept a bite of Madoka's lunch, which suggests that he is physically capable of doing so. His subsequent chewing motions imply that he has teeth of some sort (though he is careful never to show them onscreen). He has no qualms about eating his own corpse, though how much of this is out of genuine hunger, a desire not to waste organic material, an easy way to destroy evidence that could potentially be used against him, or all of the above, is unclear.
Since Kyubey consumes solid food, he must also have some way of digesting and eliminating his meals, either through specific organs and/or undifferentiated cells that can perform these tasks. If not, then perhaps the food is temporarily stored inside his body and transported somewhere else for disposal, in a manner similar to his collection of grief seeds through his other "mouth"--the red circle on his back that he uses to collect grief seeds.
Unfortunately, there isn't really a good biological analogue for this particular body part in Earth mammals, which makes it more challenging to analyze. Is the red circle the entrance some sort of storage pouch that Kyubey uses to temporarily store grief seeds, or a genuine portal directly leading somewhere else (perhaps the Incubator homeworld)? Either explanation is possible. Although we never see it in the original anime, the Wraith arc manga also shows Kyubey pulling other items out of this "doorway", implying that it can be used in a manner similar to Homura's shield. Instead of picking up the grief seeds in his mouth or handling them with his paws like an Earth animal, Kyubey uses clever maneuvering and/or telekinesis to insert grief seeds into the desired orifice--perhaps it's easier or more dignified this way, or perhaps there's something in his mouth that he doesn't want people to see.
So, having established that Incubators can eat human food and their own organic matter, what else can we glean about the Incubator diet? Like humans, they seem incredibly adaptable, capable of eating a wide variety of substances, including meat; they are not obligate herbivores. Quite the opposite--given their behavior and attitude towards humans, the Incubators almost certainly evolved as highly intelligent predators.
Why do I say this? First of all, there aren't many plants capable of growing in low-light environments--though it's possible that the Incubators could be culturing or foraging for fungi or bacteria that do not need light to thrive. Secondly, on a meta level, Kyubey belongs to a long line of telepathic predatory space cats stretching back to the early days of science fiction (see the "A Coeurl by Any Other Name" section of my essay Null Man's Land for further details). His habit of stalking magical girl candidates and his penchant for always taking the high ground--literally casting himself above them--are also marks of a cunning ambush predator.
Finally, despite the lip service Kyubey pays to "informed consent", the Incubator-human relationship is fundamentally predatory in nature. The fact that Kyubey directly compares humanity to "livestock"--showing Madoka images of cows, pigs, and chickens, all with eerily-blinking red Incubator eyes--speaks volumes about their view of farming humanity for their own needs. Given Kyubey's nonchalant auto-cannibalism, meat is meat, regardless of its origins; he treats himself exactly the same as he treats others: as a resource to be used. But in the case of magical girls, the prize is not flesh, but spirit--energy, not matter, is his primary goal.
Mind over Matter
So far I've made a case for how the ancestral Incubators might have evolved and how certain elements of their biology might work, but it's obviously not the full story. At some point, the Incubators figured out how to separate souls from bodies. We know this because they do it to humans all the time as part of the magical girl system. However, contact with humanity was unlikely to be the first time they attempted this, especially since Kyubey performs this operation at least once using his "ear-tails", a unique organ I haven't discussed yet.
When Sayaka contracts in the original anime, these "ear-tails" appear to elongate and grab her chest with their fleshy, finger-like tips. This suggests that these appendages may actually be the Incubator equivalent of human hands or an elephant's trunk, which can be used for delicate manipulations. However, physical contact does not appear to be necessary part of contracting, as Kyubey never touches Madoka or Homura when they make their wishes in later episodes. So what exactly is happening in this scene--and what exactly did those ear-tails evolve to do in the first place?
Well, just like the other predatory psychic space cats in their non-diegetic lineage (see earlier note above), it's likely the Incubators originally used their ear-tails to extract the souls of their prey. (They might also consume the body afterward, but I doubt it's considered the primary delicacy.) Combine this with the idea that the ancestral Incubators also likely used their telepathy to lure in prey and/or convince the prey that it "wanted" to be eaten, and you arrive at something very much like the magical girl system, complete with Kyubey's hyperfocus on a certain kind of "consent".
This hypothesis also explains how the Incubators could have discovered human soul gems in the first place: they initially tried to feed directly on humanity, only to realize through trial and error they could get far bigger payoffs by "domesticating" humans through the magical girl system. They threw in a wish for each victim as bait to sweeten the pot, and entice their prey into agreeing to the bargain, which also made it morally and ethically acceptable for Incubators to proceed with the operation.
If the Incubators feed directly on souls for sustenance, their claims about needing human emotional energy to "power their civilization" takes on an awful new light. From the Incubators' perspective, it wouldn't technically be a lie, and it sounds more noble than "your suffering is delicious". (Obligatory shout-out to classic Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man," in which the eponymous holy writ of the seemingly beneficent aliens turns out to be a cookbook.) This is not to suggest that Incubators aren't using the energy they gather for other things--just that it wouldn't surprise me if they were taking a cut off the top directly for themselves first and foremost.
On a related note, I also wouldn't be surprised if the Incubators had soul gem(s) of their own. If Incubators truly don't experience emotions, there is no danger of the gem(s) becoming "corrupted" and thus no logical reason not to perform the operation. For a race that idolizes logical and efficiency, being able to separate their minds from their bodies is entirely on-brand--and, to be fair, it would come with a lot of perks, such as the ability to tune out pain at will. It also would explain why Kyubey is seemingly immortal--without access to his soul gem, it would be truly impossible to kill him, no matter how much damage is done to any of his bodies.
Kyubey's speeches about the benefits of such a separation in the original series imply at least some degree of personal experience with the procedure--and remember, he believes it's perfectly acceptable to treat other people the same way he treats himself. If he's okay with ripping souls out of peoples' bodies, it's likely because he's already done the same thing to himself--and he was fine, so why are the silly humans always so upset about it?
However, one notable limitation of soul gems is that the connection between mind and body break down past a certain distance. For humans, this is approximately 200 meters, but it's unclear if such limits apply to a hypothetical Incubator equivalent. Alternately, they might use some kind of advanced magitech or physics, such as wormholes, teleportation, or space-time manipulation to bypass the problem entirely.
Let's Talk About Sex (and Gender)
Here's a question you probably don't want to think about: do the Incubators have sex? Probably not, or at least not the way humans do. For starters, we've only met one individual Incubator in canon--though it's unclear if all Incubators represent one mind spread out over many bodies (so that every Incubator is a fragment of the same Incubator), or if there are multiple unique individuals, each capable of "piloting" multiple bodies (and Kyubey is just the one we've happened to know by name). Kyubey does use "we" in the Rebellion, suggesting that either he has dropped the facade of presenting as a singular entity or that Incubators are truly plural in nature. However, this distinction is important primarily because sex is only relevant if there are multiple individuals with distinct genotypes--otherwise, there's not really much point from an evolutionary perspective.
Certainly, Incubators don't need sex in order to reproduce. Regardless of whether they are unique individuals or only one being, they could do so via cloning, budding, pathenogenesis, or some other method of asexual reproduction. It's also possible that they could do some of both, depending on circumstances.
That said, biological sex isn't the only way of differentiating individuals. If the Incubators are truly a hive as well as a hive mind, it's entirely possible that like ants, bees, wasps, termites, and other eusocial insects, they have different castes or roles (though again, to what extent these are unique individuals is debatable). Worker bees and queen bees have the exact same sex chromosomes, but develop differently due to their diet as larvae; an analogous process could occur with Incubators.These sorts of social arrangements are rare in vertebrate mammals, but a) we don't know if Kyubey is actually a mammal or if he just looks like one, and b) there are a few exceptions, such as the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) that could serve as a potential model for Incubator society. In addition to their physical resemblance to Incubators, naked mole-rats lack neurotransmitters to feel certain kinds of pain, are highly resistant to cancers and mutations, and live entirely underground, all of which are traits the proto-Incubators likely possessed as well. They also have a hormonally-induced caste system, with a fertile "queen", a handful of fertile males, with the rest of the colony being sterile workers.
Given the nature of Kyubey's interactions with humanity and my earlier speculations that the Incubators originally lived underground, I would not be surprised at all if Kyubey completely lacked reproductive capabilities, and there was a "queen" Incubator kept hidden away deep underground on their home planet. Is this a stretch? Maybe, but it's compatible with what we see in canon (so far, anyway) and it would make for a great plot device.
However, even if the Incubators have biological sexes or socially determined genders--which, as I've said, isn't necessarily the case--it's unlikely that they perfectly map onto human ones, let alone that of early twenty-first century Japan. Given all of this, why do I refer to Kyubey as male?
Part of it is because Kyubey himself does. In the original Japanese, he uses the gendered pronoun "boku", which is usually used by young boys. In-universe, most of the characters in-universe appear to refer to Kyubey as "he," at least before his true nature is revealed. Outside of canon, fans also use the more gender-neutral "it" (usually derogatory) as well as "they", the latter of which nicely encompasses both possibilities regarding the Incubator's plural nature. However, I also use "he" because Kyubey maps so perfectly as a symbol of the patriarchy (to the point where Mami explicitly compares him to a boy who pressures girls into a relationship) that referring to him as male is especially fitting. On a metaphorical level, Kyubey is not only a guy, he's That Guy.
Kyubey identifying himself as male is especially striking when you remember he's also a gender essentialist--the entire magical girl system is predicated on the false assumption that human women are more emotional than men, to the point where he solely targets adolescent girls. This suggests that despite his telepathic abilities, he is basing his judgement not on actual human feelings--where it would be clear that men also experience emotions just as much and just as fully as women--but on their outward, observable behavior. Thus, in a culture like modern Japan where men are conditioned from birth to refrain from crying and other obvious displays of emotion, it's "only logical" that Kyubey would assume that women are inherently more emotional beings. And since Kyubey himself experiences no emotions (or so he claims), it's "only logical" that he would identify as male to humans.
Appearances Can Be Deceiving
At the beginning of this essay, I started with the assumption that the Incubator form was both biological in nature and representative of their ancestral lineage. What if neither of these hypotheses are true? Is there anything we can say about the Incubators then?
If the Incubators are not cute and furry creatures, what are they like? This clip of Li'l Kyubey from the Magia Record gacha game suggests the "true" body of the Incubator is a black shadowy sea of floating red eyes. (Interestingly, some descriptions of Old Testament angels depict them as nothing but eyes; given how Incubators view their relationship with humanity, this may or may not be a coincidence.) However, though Kyubey dismisses his physical bodies as "him", the exact relationship between these eyes and the Incubator bodies remains unclear.
But if the Incubators have always been shadowy eldritch horrors who are piloting pseudo-mammalian bodies, such a choice demonstrates their sophisticated understanding of their chosen targets. In this case, the white color of their fur is not due to lack of evolutionary selection pressures, it's a deliberate choice because white animals are rare in nature, and thus would stand out as special to human eyes and thus (ironically) allow Kyubey to be easily identified as a unique individual. Though the exact meaning varies from culture to culture, white is often associated with purity and goodness, thus priming susceptible humans into believing that the Incubators themselves were good.
Though humans are capable of bonding with almost any creature--and more than a few inanimate objects and metaphorical concepts--fuzzy four-legged mammals have a special appeal. The soft, fluffy fur allows for easy stroking and petting, and their small size makes them easy to ride on a shoulder, as Kyubey often does with Madoka. The big eyes and head coupled with the short limbs characteristic of infants make them appear especially "cute" compared to wild animals (another example of neoteny in action).
Disguising themselves in such a "cute" form allows the Incubators to bypass the human threat response and take advantage of the assumption that "cute" equals "harmless" in order to more easily infiltrate human society. Even if their appearance doesn't reflect their own biology or values, it certainly reflects their skill at mimicry and their willingness to do whatever it takes to snag their prey.
Humans are often described as persistence predators, capable of running much larger creatures like deer or antelope into exhaustion. The Incubators are persistence predators, too... of human beings. But instead of actively chasing humans down, Kyubey prefers to simply wait, knowing that eventually he will either wear down his target's resistance, and/or a situation will come up where the target has no choice but to contract. Alternately, even if someone rejects him for good, P.T. Barnum's adage that "there's a sucker born every minute" still holds true--and as long as human nature exists, there will always be something for girls to wish for. Regardless of the outcome, Kyubey benefits.
But the relationship between predator and prey is never one-sided; if humanity has shaped the Incubators, they have also shaped humanity. Kyubey claims that when his people made first contact, human beings were apes living in caves--and while he's not necessarily a reliable narrator, the show appears to take this particular claim seriously, with visual reference to Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam later in the same episode. Furthermore, Null Magical Girl echoes that claim with the narrator's revelation that "the [human] cognitive revolution was the magical girl revolution". I don't know how much I personally believe that every advancement in human civilization throughout history is the result of magical girls (and thus the Incubators)--but it's certainly true that magical girls have shaped human history far more than most humans are aware of in-universe.
If You're Happy And You Know It
Now it's time to look at one of the most interesting features of the Incubators: their apparent lack of emotions. I say "apparent" because once again, we only have Kyubey's word for it, and he is far from a reliable narrator. But for the sake of argument, I will assume that he is correct and the Incubators really do lack the capacity for emotions in any respect.
Evolutionarily speaking, emotions are not a requirement for organic life, but they are a useful and effective way for individuals to respond to their environment and take actions that will help them avoid getting eaten and/or reproduce. An awareness of others' moods and feelings is especially helpful for social animals that live in large communal groups, and humans are particularly well-developed in that respect. However, this task could also be accomplished by hormones or pheromones instead of emotions, as well as some kind of logical, rule-based system (see the mobiles in Diane Duane's novel High Wizardry for a silicon-based example).
Because emotions play such a huge role in human society, it can be challenging to imagine a sentient being without them. However, the extended PMMM canon does give us a few hints here and there, with Kyubey referring to his spare bodies in the Kazumi Magica manga as "terminals" and the protagonist of Null Magical Girl explicitly comparing him to chatbots like Chat-GPT and ELIZA. Although I doubt they were on anyone's mind in 2011 when the Incubators were initially envisioned, large language models (LLMs) and other so-called "AI" programs are good metaphors for Kyubey, as both are capable of communicating and interacting with humans even though their logic and reasoning move along very different lines.
The Chinese room argument is a 1980 thought experiment postulated by philosopher John Searle, in which a man who doesn't read Chinese is in a closed room where he regularly receives messages in Chinese characters through a slot in the door. By using an English-Chinese dictionary, the man can interpret these messages and slip his own responses under the door, thus communicating with a Chinse speaker on the outside despite not knowing Chinese himself.
The Chinese room argument is usually used to explore the concept of a "sentient AI" and how that might or might now differ from the experience of the non-Chinese speaker in the room. In this case, however, we can use it to explain how a being (organic or not) who does not experience emotions can be such a skilled manipulator, just as ELIZA and ChatGPT have convinced many interlocutors that they were human. Kyubey also benefits from the natural human assumption that everyone's mind works more or less the same way as theirs does--one that it doesn't usually occur to his victims to question it until it's too late.
However, the ability to mimic the experience of having emotions or communicating with beings that experience them is very different from genuinely understanding them, as LLMs frequently demonstrate. Like these programs, Kyubey is constantly caught off guard by human behavior (especially Homura's). He knows from experience that girls won't make contracts if he shares certain facts about witches and soul gems, so he doesn't tell them unless they specifically ask--but for all his knowledge and experience, he cannot fathom why this correlation exists. Fortunately (or not), Kyubey is a pragmatist--why humans do what they do is irrelevant as long as he meets his targeted energy quota by any and all means necessary, up to and including the total destruction of planet Earth in at least one timeline (something that many people fear might also happen with "AI" in the future in real life).
Another potential analogy for Kyubey is psychopathy, an emotional disorder characterized by lack of empathy and remorse. This is a highly divisive topics, so I'll limit myself to noting that just as humans consider Kyubey to be "damaged" by human standards, the Incubators believe that experiencing emotion is a mental illness in its own right. However, the Incubators are also hypocrites--they don't wish to heal or "fix" humans, they want to mine these "useless" emotions as fuel while simultaneously belittling the force that underpins their entire civilization. In a satisfying twist, this arrogance prove to be their downfall again and again, as they are continually sidelined and outwitted by Madoka and Homura in both the main series and Rebellion sequel film.
"Can Kyubey lie?" is a fascinating question, one that could be an entire essay in and of itself. For now, I'll just say that from an evolutionary perspective, just about every species, even ones that don't experience emotion, practices some form of deception, whether it's orchid flowers mimicking the shape of female bees, or a caterpillar larva using ant pheromones to trick an ant colony into taking care of it. There is every reason to assume that the Incubators can and do lie outright, and that Kyubey is not a reliable narrator. Even if all of his statements are technically factual, he's not above withholding information or making deliberately misleading statements in order to achieve his desired results--which is effectively the same as lying.
Regardless of whether he is more biological or spiritual in nature, Kyubey is functionally a machine wrapped in animal flesh--a smaller, cuter version of the killer robot in the Terminator movies (which also has red eyes). If Homura had paraphrased the explanation from the first movie and informed a terrified Madoka that "The Incubator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you have contracted", maybe things would have turned out differently... or maybe not.
Which Came First?
In addition to their other psychic abilities, the Incubators appear to have some method of witnessing or calculating possible futures, as demonstrated by Kyubey's measurements of "karmic potential" of magical girl candidates and his remark in Rebellion that the Madoka trapped in Homura's proto-labyrinth did not exist in any past or future possibility he could detect. This is more along the lines of sophisticated mathematical modeling than actual precognition (and could be the result of technology rather than an inborn ability), but either way, it's something the Incubators would be primed to develop further if only to improve their efficiency.
In Null Magical Girl, which may or may not be canon with the main series, Kyubey's ability to assess the future result in him becoming trapped in a causal loop and bootstrap paradox along with the narrator. Between this and PMMM's general obsession with time loops, alternate dimensions, universal resets, and major plot twists, it makes me wonder if the Incubators in the main canon are the result of yet another world-altering wish, as well as the proximate cause?
What if the Incubators' original first contact with humanity wasn't in the distant past, but in the future, just as the universe was about to be destroyed? A young girl wished for a way to stop it--and in order to prevent a paradox, the universe was once again re-written so that the Incubators had always been there from the beginning, as with the wraiths at the end of the original anime.
We all know how PMMM loves a good plot twist--is it so farfetched to believe that the Incubators may not be what we thought they were? After all, Kyubey claimed that his mission was to prevent the heat death of the universe--but, in classic Incubator fashion, he never explained why. Wouldn't it be horrifying to learn that as bad as his system is for individual magical girls, it was sincerely initiated by a magical girl in the future to save the universe from an even worse fate? It would also explain many of the oddities and as-yet-unresolved mysteries of the Incubators, though it may or may not be compatible with the more traditional evolutionary approach I've conducted thus far, where time is assumed to move in one direction without any interference from parallel universes.
Conclusion
As you can see, I've barely scratched the surface of the possibilities for Incubator biology and culture, many of which are inspired by real animals here on Earth. Based on my knowledge of biology, it's easy for me to picture the Incubators as the neotenized descendants of cave-dwelling predators who developed telepathy as a way to befuddle their prey and communicate with each other, and who consumed their targets' souls as well as their bodies, all of which eventually led to the development of the magical girl system. I'm also intrigued by the idea of Incubators developing soul gems for themselves, and that they may be eusocial animals with clearly defined social and/or reproductive castes, both of which are interesting concepts worthy of further exploration.
However, there are numerous other explanations that are compatible with what we see in canon. Perhaps the Incubators are beings that lie outside our understanding of the world--in which case, the forms they use still reflect our own views about animals and machines. It's also possible that the Incubators themselves are the result of time loop(s) and universal re-writes we don't yet know about, which would make parsing their true origins more difficult.
Of course, none of this is necessary in order to enjoy PMMM or any of its spinoff material--what makes the Incubators such effective antagonists is the gulf between their cutesy appearance and their behavior, which increasingly widens over the course of the original PMMM anime, until their true nature is finally revealed. The fact that so little is known about them for certain only adds to the horror, and it may be that any official canonical explanation(s) that may be forthcoming will ultimately prove an anticlimax. Still, I can't help wondering what the Incubators are truly like (and how they got that way), and build stories around them for myself and others to enjoy.