In many cases, the implant is quite noticeable to the victim, and can either be removed or extracted using surgical means. In other instances however, the victim remains completely unaware of the implant's presence in their body, and as a result the object ends up being there for sometimes years on end. As to the purpose of these implants we can only guess - some suggest that they are devices through which the Aliens can receive data transmitted back to them through some form of highly developed organic transmitter. Some believe that the implants are careless leftovers from Alien surgery, although this would seem inappropriate for such an apparently advanced species.

One case of interest later involved a woman who found a large piece of plastic suddenly fall from her eye when she was at lunch. This was later linked to a previous Alien abduction experience, the hypothesis from which suggested that the object was solely for the purpose of allowing the aliens to "see" through the woman's eyes. One point of interest in relation to this however suggests that such an advanced species would really have no need for such a method of reconnaissance - to an advanced Alien race such a process could be considered almost old-fashioned.

There have been a whole variety of strange objects and devices removed from abductees over the years, some of which cannot be identified at all by modern science. Many of these are constructed of a strange indestructible substance, which appears to have a cross between organic and non-organic composition. Some of the implants are small T-Shaped devices, which have no obvious purpose at all, whereas others are found to have been inserted into many of the body's sensory organs such as the nose and ear passageways. In all such cases however, the ultimate purpose of such implants is ultimately impossible to judge.

The concept of implants is an outgrowth of the modern UFO craze, which began in 1947. In the 1960s came reports of alien abductions, events now understood to consist largely of waking dreams, hypnosis-induced fantasies, and hoaxes. Implants seem to have begun with the alleged 1967 abduction of a Massachusetts woman, Betty Andreasson, who described a tiny spiked ball that had supposedly been inserted up her nose.

Soon such devices began to proliferate, one of which survived and was thoroughly investigated by the Centre for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in the late 1980s. Possessed by a self-claimed abductee, the object had supposedly been implanted by his extraterrestrial abductors, but was later dislodged when he caught a cold and blew his nose. It proved to be a common ball bearing!

Since 1994 alleged implants have been surgically recovered but they've become remarkably diverse: one looks like a shard of glass, another a triangular piece of metal, still another a carbon fibre, and so on. None was located in the brain or nasal cavity, instead being recovered from such extremities as toe, hand, shin, external ear, etc.; some were accompanied by scars while others were not.