‘Skitter’ is the name used colloquially to label the eight-limbed extraterrestrial creatures that have a major role in the TV series Falling Skies. Thought by many to be those responsible for the invasion of Earth, they are actually the enslaved subordinates of another sentient race — the Espheni — who hijacked them from their home world, and used biotechnological ‘harnesses’ to control them. It is unknown whether the harnesses structurally alter the creatures — in a similar manner to the effects they display on the harnessed human children — or not. The Skitters are mainly nocturnal and communicate through specific radio waves; their weakness is the absence of a palate bone, making a direct strike at the brain relatively easy. When inactive, they lie hanging from ceilings.

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