The original design for the creature in John McTiernan's 1987 actioner Predator was originally twisted and more animalistic. It stood taller and had huge yellow eyes and a head like a horse's skull. Fun Trivia: Jean-Claude Van Damme was the original stuntman hired to play the spindly version of the Predator. More fun trivia: in the sequel "Predator", during a Halloween sequence, a small child walks past the camera wearing the original Predator as his costume.

The eventual design for the Predator - called Yautya in the expanded universe - was much more humanoid. The predator was a tall man with a muscular, masculine figure. It had long claws, shark-like skin, and was equipped with high-tech alien-hunting equipment. He wore a mask for most of Predator, but eventually removed it to reveal a crab-like face, evil eyes, and an unmistakably vulval mouth with fangs. The predator's vaginal face is in keeping with the film's overall satirical depiction of overblown, cartoonish masculinity. The design was striking enough to carry over into six additional films, not to mention a wide range of additional Predator media, including video games, comics, books and toys.

Most notably, the Predator had dreadlocks that swished dramatically when he turned his head. The dreadlocks even had little rings and bangles attached and it looked pretty badass. Every Predator seems to wear their hair in a similar fashion.

The vast sea of ​​"Predator" extended universe foreshadowing, however, reveals that those strands aren't hair at all. If one dives deep into the many Predator comics, one will discover that those cranial tendrils are actually complex sensory organs that help Yautya with his balance and reflexes.

In Brian Macdonald's 1996 comic Predator: Strange Roo, one of the titular creatures, while hunting people in the swamps of southern Louisiana, was shot in the head by a local trapper. The shotgun blast blew out a few of his "hairs", and they actually started bleeding. This was proof positive, semi-canonical, that the Predator's cranial spurs were definitely not hairs, but a series of boneless bumps on the creature's head. Later in that book, the trapper gets the Predator's drop by luring it into quicksand, killing it ... and making it into a stew. Predators seem to eat each other.

The true biological function of Yautya's tendrils, however, would not be made explicit until the 2008 novel Predator: South China Sea by Jeff VanderMeer. That novel finally made it clear that the tendrils provide increased sensory input for the Predator, giving him a better sense of balance than a human. They also seemingly provided some sort of "spider sense" effect to the aliens, as they enhanced the creature's reflexes as well. The conceit exhibited in "South China Sea" also explained why the imprisoned Yautya had its tendrils removed in the 2005 video game "Predator: Concrete Jungle".

Considering that Predators adorn their tendrils with bangles and ringsapparently there is an aesthetic aspect to their dreadlocks and to their culture. Maybe the same way someone can pierce their nose. In David Bischoff's 1994 novel Aliens vs. Predator: Planet of the Hunter, a man named Machiko Noguchi falls in with a pack of Predators, becoming an ally. To blend in better, she raised her hair to look like Predator tendrils. When they are cut off in the novel, Machiko complains that the male Predators won't find her attractive. Long shoots seem to be considered beautiful by Yautya jobos.

The Predator was designed by master creature designer Stan Winston, who also created monsters and robots for The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Aliens, The Thing, Edward Scissorhands and hundreds of others. He won four Academy Awards for SFX and Makeup. In interviews included on the Predator DVDs, Winston revealed that the "dreadlocks" were meant to be feathers, possibly a pig. He didn't offer much detail beyond the word "dreadlocks," but his use of the word implies that Winston wanted the dreadlocks to be more hair-like and perhaps even come off. It wasn't Winston who thought they should be blood-filled sense organs.

Fun trivia: When Yuatja turns on his cloak device in "Predator", it will be seen closely that his dreadlocks are not part of his flickering silhouette. This was done because using the hair invisibility effect was too complicated for the SFX team. They decided to get around the problem by simply removing the hair for stealth shots. That's okay, because it's barely noticeable.

Other looks around the Predator franchise reveal other details. For example, most deadlocks are black, but some Predators had blue or red ones. Older predators seem to turn gray. In the feature film "AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem" a Predator is implanted with a xenomorph egg, and the resulting offspring is a combination of Alien and Predator ... with dreadlocks. It was a pretty sure sign that the "hairs" were the fleshy part of the monster's head.