The Insane Biology of: The Dune Sandworm

this video is brought to you by nebula where you can watch the brand new series I produced and starred in called archaeology Quest bless the maker and his water bless the coming and going of him may his passage cleanse the world may he keep the world for his people this is a prayer recited by the native inhabitants of arachis the planet also known as dune the fman give this blessing as the Colossal Shai hulo breaks through the surface of the sand spreading the prized spice mange across the desert Planet this psychedelic substance has many uses from prolonging one's life to enhancing their mental capabilities by ingesting spice The Guild Navigators are able to travel in deep space and the Benny jeser are granted their impressive powers and as the makers of this valuable substance Shai HUD also known as sand worms are considered to be the most important organism in the entirety of the known universe of course this is not the universe as we know it but the one in the science fiction world of Dune the universe Frank Herbert created has extended well beyond the page into the hearts and minds of millions of fans around the world many of them have spent a good deal of time contemplating the details of the book agonizing over plot points and imagining life on such a harsh planet and while Herbert has given fans much to think about there are a lot of unknowns including details about the biology of the universe's most renowned creatures what we do know is that sandworms are one of the largest animals in the universe their sizes vary from 100 to over 400 m in length with some reports of worms reaching half a league or around 2500 M their skin is a series of overlapping scales each about 1 to 3 m wide that create a strong impenetrable armor protecting the sandworm from abrasion of the surrounding sand and each of their body segments is capable of Life on its own their mouths can extend up to 80 m in diameter and are lined with crystalline teeth capable of devouring man and machine if you're lucky you may be able to detect their approach and make your Escape they often cause dry lightning through a discharge of static electricity and their odor of spice fills the air and then the sand begins to vibrate and by then it might be too late and for such an enormous creature they begin life on a much smaller scale their first stage of life is sand Plankton these are microscopic organisms that feed on spice mange on the surface of the desert they are eaten by sand worms but also burrow into the sand and become sand trout which are also known as little makers in this stage they are described by Herbert as half plant half animal they create water Pockets within the sand which when mixed with their bile becomes preice Mass they also emit gases that eventually build up and result in spice blows which brings the pre-ice mass to the surface often in extraordinary lethal eruptions here the Sun and air turn it into spice while many sand trout die during during these blows some survive and grow into the Behemoth sandworms while all of this background information is certainly enough for a series of novels it's missing specific details that explain the sandw worm's unusual biology luckily Herbert's dedicated fan base spans all professions including biologists and some have spent a significant amount of time attempting to fill in the blanks left by Herbert by using what they know about animals here on Earth one of the main questions many people have wondered what these worms is how can they be so big on Earth the largest land animal is believed to have been the dinosaur Argentinosaurus though a complete skeleton hasn't been discovered yet estimates based on the fossils we currently have put it at 37 to 40 m in length and 90 to 100 metric tons in the sea animals can get even bigger since their weight is partly ported by water which is why the largest animal ever to live on earth lives in the ocean the blue whale can reach up to 33 M long and weigh 180 metric tons but still the sandworm dwarfs them both so is it even possible for an animal to reach that size technically it is possible but there are biological and mechanical obstacles the animal would need to overcome the first is a structural support system if a the 33 M blue whale weighs 180 metric tons one can only imagine how much a 400x 80 M sandworm might weigh to carry around that much mass and move around especially at the rapid Pace these Giants are known for traveling you need an incredibly strong skeletal system while the description of sandworms brings to mind Earth's anals which include worms or possibly arthropods like centipedes it would be incredibly unlikely for either of these types of animals to reach the Colossal size of a sandor worm anelids have a hydroskeleton which maintains their shape by keeping water or fluid under constant pressure this would be impossible to maintain on a dry desert Planet arthropods have a hard exoskeleton but since they mol as they grow making them vulnerable while waiting for a new exoskeleton to harden scientists believe there's a size limit to how big an animal with an exoskeleton can be the largest in the world is the Japanese spider crab which is just 3.5 M wide in addition the exoskeleton would have to be incredibly thick to support all their weight which would leave little room for other important body parts like organs instead a sandworm would probably contain an internal skeletal structure and be more similar to a snake which is consistent with its scaly exterior since bones are made up of living tissue they grow as the animal grows this would theoretically allow the sandworms to grow continuously however there is a structural consideration that may prevent this in physics the longer a beam is the more it will sag for example a 5 cm beam will sag 1300 times less than a 2 m Beam with the same cross-sectional area to avoid sagging the bones of larger animals are bulkier and heavier making up a larger proportion of the animals overall body body weight to put this into perspective scientists estimate that a small sand worm's bones would be about 40% of its body weight compared to about 18% for an average human man this would make it impossible for sandworms to move that is if they were made of calcium like our bones but they might be made of something else entirely in a 2007 essay a biologist named seil hetchel speculated that sandworms must have bones made of something stronger than calcium such as metal which would reduce their diameter and depending on the metal their weight however they would need a diet rich in metals to be able to produce metallic bones so perhaps the sand on oracus contains more Metals than the sand here on Earth or the Harvesters they're known for eating provide them with enough of these Metals but even with all the structural support in the world there's another problem how such a gigantic creature can regulate its body temperature as muscles flex and contract they generate Heat this is typically released to the cooler environment through the skin if it didn't the body's temperature would rise to dangerous levels leading to heat stroke or even death but how do you expel internal heat if you live in an environment where the ambient temperature is much higher than your bodies the temperature of the sand on a racus can reach 76° C or 170 de F sandworms extra-large muscles and organs would create a lot of internal heat and the unforgiving desert environment of AR racus would make it incredibly hard to release it on Earth many animals have developed ways to regulate their temperature these include mechanisms like flat appendages that can act as heat exchangers like the ears of elephants these methods are especially important for large animals who have a bigger volume to surface area ratio than small small animals other animals on Earth resort to sweating to keep cool but there's one big problem with this and the Dune sandw worms water kills them in fact they're not water-based life forms at all it's hinted that they're not even carbon-based life forms there's something in the ecology appendix about carbon-based proteins being incompatible and toxic to them and since water is toxic to them sweating is out of the question so maybe they use evaporative cooling with a liquid other than water or maybe as a nonwater based life form and not even a carbon-based life form they can withstand the heat maybe they even need it the book describes hot chemical furnaces churning inside the worm so perhaps there's a purpose for their internal heat for instance it could be used to drive the chemical reactions in their body our own bodies require certain temperatures for our enzymes to work these are proteins that accelerate chemical reaction and they typically perform best at 37° C while Earthly proteins break down at around 40° C perhaps the sandworms are equipped with proteins or comparable unknown molecules that need furnace like conditions these reactions are also supposedly what creates the planet's supply of oxygen on Earth plants create oxygen through photosynthesis in this process they take in carbon dioxide and water and use energy from the Sun to create sugars and carbohydrates these are longchain molecules composed of carbon hydrogen and oxygen the extra oxygen atom gets released into the atmosphere araus doesn't have many plants yet it still contains enough oxygen to support life noticing this Oddity in the novel the planet's ecologist leot Kines predicted the presence of an underground organism capable of producing oxygen this ended up being the sand trout but since they live underground they can't be using the sun's energy to create oxygen so how do they do it while Herbert described them as half plant half animal fans postulate that they may actually have more in common with bacteria that is a particular type called chemoautotrophic bacteria which produce oxygen without the sun they are also known as extremophiles due to living in harsh environments like deep sea vents they create energy by oxidizing chemicals like hydrogen sulfide methane and ammonia they then use this energy the water produced during the oxidation process and carbon dioxide to make sugars and carbohydrates while releasing oxygen it's likely that some of the same chemicals are also released from underground vents on AR racus so perhaps the sand trout are able to use them in the same way and create oxygen as a byproduct but being a fairly sizable organism the sand trout also likely need to eat something to be able to produce pre-ic m Mass sand Plankton is said to eat the spice and the sandworms ingest the sand Plankton so what about the sand trout as the makers of the spice it wouldn't make sense that they eat that as well so maybe there's another organism involved one that both feeds the sand trout and helps it to create the pre-ice mass in her essay the biologist Dr hetchel pointed out that most of Earth's exotic compounds come from plants bacteria and fungi so what if the same was true for oracus there are lots of examples of symbiotic relationships between these types of organisms and animals one famous example is the leaf cutter ant these ants act as Farmers for certain species of fungi they bring pieces of leaves into their underground nests and keep them moist so that the fungus will grow on them after the fungus digests the cellulose in the leaves which the ants cannot do themselves the ants eat it so perhaps there's a fungus growing underground in the sand Trout's water pocket Pockets this could serve as their food as well as the source for the pre-ice mass of course this and the other theories mentioned in this video are just that theories but that's what makes books like Dune so lovable after they're completed by the author groups of fans come together to discuss their favorite Parts look for plot holes and develop their own Concepts to fill them this video has been a big experiment for me being on camera is sort of new the whole time we were filming this all I could think about was how much is the normal human amount to move my eyebrows maybe some people know how to not feel like an alien when doing this stuff but not me but I'm sort of just embracing feeling like an alien because I recently learned how fun it can be to do new types of shows in New formats I recently got to produce and star in a ridiculous ambitious funny but still educational nebula original show called archaeology Quest about experimental archaeology where me and my co-writer Lorraine compete against each other in Paleolithic tasks from making stone tools to throwing Spears to foraging mushrooms we do our absolute best to learn from Top experimental archaeology experts about these things but at the end of the day we are not that good at most of these things the mushroom foraging episode just got released and you can see for yourselves how many times each of us would have done died based on the 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Channel: Real Science

Views: 1,412,715

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Id: _J8xDYxp4bM

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2024