Predator banana palm

Meanwhile, about a hundred feet downwind, the observer absorbed the cells of a banana palm. It consumed the tree and at the same time replicated it perfectly. In a microsecond there was no tree at all. It was just a thought now in the nerve cluster of the chameleonlike invader, though even the monkeys rutting in the fronds were not aware of the transformation. The blackened bananas looked exactly the same and tasted the same to the flies. The creature sent out its radar, silent as fallout.

It surveyed Blain and Mac with its heat-seeking vision, their bodies outlined in luminous aureoles. To the invader the electrified trip wires with their concentrated energy glowed brilliantly, even under the midday sun, standing out in high-contrast relief to the jungle foliage. The being thought the men must be feeding, drinking up the current like pollinating bees. It could not understand yet what the purpose of these creatures was. Every other species seemed to fit in the scheme of things, and the invader had traveled throughout the universe to study that scheme. It had gathered specimens of each, till they were stacked and filed in its mind like butterflies in a cabinet.

Not man. Man was other, like the alien itself. It was as if the universe had finally dared to think up a proposition equal to the alien’s capacity for wonder.

And all it knew was this: it must possess them.

   The Predator (1987 novelization), chapter 4