Editing Space: Above and Beyond (section)

====Culture====
Much about Chig society remains unknown throughout the series, which presents them as mysterious and terrifying aliens trying to destroy humanity. Their hierarchy and general [[social structure]]s remain unexplained. From the Chig ambassador's claims in the final two episodes, it seems that they consider the moon on which they evolved (codenamed "Anvil" by humans) to be "[[sacred]]". One curious practice observed since early in the war with humanity was that whenever Chig infantry encountered the grave of a dead human soldier, they would dig up the body and mutilate the corpse, typically by dismembering it. At first, the human military thought this was a terror-tactic, meant to frighten human soldiers. It was eventually discovered that while the Chigs may possess some form of "religion" (given that they consider their breeding grounds to be sacred), they never developed a concept of an [[afterlife]].

Humans are, it turns out, just as much mysterious and terrifying aliens to the Chigs as they are to humans. As the Chigs encountered snippets of human culture, through intercepted radio transmissions or recovered personal effects, they drastically misinterpreted this alien concept of an "afterlife". This led the Chigs to believe that dead human soldiers will ''literally'' spring back to life sometime after their death and that burying a corpse aids in this process. Genuinely terrified of this human "army of zombies", Chig infantry then began to dig up the graves of human soldiers they came across in order to dismember their corpses to make sure they "stay dead".<ref name="Pearly"/>

Just as humans have applied the [[derogatory]] "Chig" [[moniker]] to the aliens, they have a slang term for humans. According to their Silicate allies, the term loosely translates as "Red Stink Creature".<ref name="Choice or Chance" /> Chigs have green instead of red blood, and they smell like [[sulfur]]. As it turns out, humans' red blood and non-sulfur smell strikes the Chigs as just as disturbingly "unnatural" as their alien biology seems to humans.