The Insane Biology of: The Dune Sandworm

This video is presented by nebula where you can see the new series that I produced and starred in called archeology Quest bless the creator and his water bless his comings and goings may his passage cleanse the world may he preserve the world for his people this is a prayer recited by the native inhabitants of arachis the planet also known as

dune

the fman gives this blessing as the colossal shai hulo traverses the surface of the sand spreading the precious scabies spice across the desert planet this psychedelic substance has many uses from prolonging life to improving your mental abilities when ingesting spices.

The Guild Navigators can travel into deep space and the Benny jeser are given their awesome powers and as the creators of this valuable substance, Shai HUD, also known as

sandworm

s, are considered to be the most important organism in the entire universe. Known, of course, this is not the universe as we know it, but that of the science fiction world of Dune, the universe that Frank Herbert created has extended far beyond the page and into the hearts and minds of millions. from fans around the world, many of them have spent a lot of time contemplating the book's details, agonizing over plot points, and imagining life on such a harsh planet, and while Herbert has given fans plenty to think about , there are many unknowns including details about the

biology

of the most famous creatures in the universe.

What we do know is that

sandworm

s are one of the largest animals in the universe, their sizes vary from 100 to more than 400 m in length and some reports of worms reach half a league or around 2500 m. Its skin is a series of overlapping scales, each approximately 1 to 3 m wide, which create a strong, impenetrable armor that protects the sandworm from the abrasion of the surrounding sand and each of its body segments is capable of to have 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 are lucky you will be able to detect their approach and escape. They often cause dry lightning with a discharge of static electricity and their spicy smell fills the air and then the sand begins to vibrate and by then it may be too late and for such a huge creature they begin life on a much smaller scale. 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 sandworms, but they also hide in the sand and become sand trout, which are also known as little doers.

At this stage, Herbert describes them as half plant, half animal. They create pockets of water within the sand which when mixed with their bile becomes ice mass, they also emit gases which eventually build up and result in spice blows which bring the 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 these Although some survive and become Behemoth sandworms, all this background information is certainly enough for a series of novels. Specific details explaining the sandworm's unusual

biology

are lacking. Fortunately, Herbert's dedicated fan base spans all professions, including biologists, and some have spent a significant amount of time trying to fill in the blanks left by Herbert using what they know about animals here on Earth one of the main questions that many people have asked themselves: what are these worms?

How can they be so big on Earth? The largest land animal is believed to have been the Argentinosaurus dinosaur, although a complete skeleton has not yet been discovered. Estimates based on current fossils place it between 37 and 40 m in length and between 90 and 100 metric tons. In the sea, animals can grow even larger as their weight is partially carried by water, which is why the largest animal that has ever existed on Earth lives in the ocean. The blue whale can reach up to 33 m in length and weigh 180 metric tons, but the sandworm still dwarfs them both. Is it possible for an animal to reach that size?

Is it technically possible, but there are biological and mechanical obstacles that the animal would need to overcome. The first is a structural support system. If a 33 M blue whale weighs 180 metric tons, one can only imagine how much a 400 needs an incredibly strong skeletal system, while the description of sandworms is reminiscent of the annals of the Earth, which include worms or possibly arthropods like centipedes, it would be incredibly unlikely that any of these types of animals would reach the colossal size of a sandor worm Annelids have a hydroskeleton that maintains its shape by keeping water or fluid under constant pressure.

This would be impossible to maintain in a dry desert. Planetary arthropods have a hard exoskeleton, but since they shed as they grow, making them vulnerable while they wait for a new exoskeleton to harden, scientists believe there is a size limit to how big an animal can be. with an exoskeleton. The largest in the world is the Japanese spider crab, which is only 3.5 M wide. Additionally, the exoskeleton would have to be incredibly thick to support its full weight, leaving little room for other important body parts, such as organs. Instead, a sandworm would likely contain an internal skeletal structure and be more snake-like, which is consistent with its scaly exterior.

Since bones are composed of living tissue, they grow as the animal grows, this would theoretically allow sandworms to grow continuously; However, there is a structural consideration that can prevent this in physics, the longer a beam is, the more it will sink, for example 5 cm. The beam will sink 1300 times less than a 2m beam with the same cross-sectional area to prevent it from sinking. The bones of larger animals are bulkier and heavier and make up a larger proportion of the animals' total body weight. To put this into perspective, scientists estimate that a small sandworm's bones would make up about 40% of its body weight, compared to about 18% for an average human male.

This would make it impossible for sandworms to move, that is, if they were made of calcium like our bones, but they could be made of something completely different. 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 metal-rich diet to be. capable of producing metallic bones, so maybe the oracus sand contains more metals than the sand here on Earth or the foragers who are known to eat provide them with enough metals, but even with all the structural support in the world, there is another problem: such a gigantic creature can regulate its body temperature as the muscles flex and contract and generate heat, which is usually released to the cooler environment through the skin, if it did not, the body temperature would rise to levels dangerous that would cause 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 body temperature? The sand temperature in a racus can reach 76°C or 170°F. The sandworms' extra-large muscles and organs would create a large amount of internal heat, and the unforgiving desert environment of AR racus would make it incredibly difficult to release on Earth. Many animals have developed ways to regulate their temperature. These include mechanisms such as flat appendages that can act as heat exchangers like elephant ears. These methods are especially important for large animals that have a greater volume to surface area ratio than small animals.

Other animals on Earth resort to sweating to keep cool, but there is a big problem with this and the water from the

dune

sandworms kills them - in fact, they are not water. carbon-based life forms are hinted at not even carbon-based life forms there is something in the ecology appendix about carbon-based proteins being incompatible and toxic to them and since water is toxic to them, the Sweating is out of the question, so maybe they use evaporative cooling with a liquid other than water or maybe as a non-water-based life form and not even a carbon-based life form.

They can withstand heat. Maybe they even need it. The book describes hot chemical furnaces churning inside the worm, so perhaps there is a purpose for its internal heat - for example, it could be used to drive chemical reactions in its body. Our own bodies require certain temperatures for our enzymes to function. These are proteins that speed up chemical reactions and generally work best at 37° C, while terrestrial proteins. decompose at around 40°C perhaps sandworms are equipped with proteins or comparable unknown molecules that need oven-like conditions. These reactions are also supposedly what create the planet's oxygen supply on Earth.

Plants create oxygen through photosynthesis. In this process they absorb carbon dioxide. and water and use energy from the Sun to create sugars and carbohydrates. These are long-chain molecules made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The extra oxygen atom is released into the atmosphere. Araus doesn't have many plants, but it still contains enough oxygen to support life. 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 cannot use 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, which are a particular type called chemoautotrophic bacteria that produce oxygen without the sun, they are also known as Extremophiles because they They live in hostile environments such as the depths of the sea. The vents create energy by oxidizing chemicals such as hydrogen sulfide, methane, and ammonia. They then use this energy, the water produced during the oxidation process, and carbon dioxide to produce sugars and carbohydrates while releasing oxygen. It is likely that some of the same chemicals are also released from underground vents. in AR racus, so perhaps sand trout can use them in the same way and create oxygen as a byproduct, but being a fairly large organism, sand trout probably also need to eat something in order to produce sand plankton pre-ic m.

It is said to eat the spice and the sandworms ingest the sand plankton. So what about sand trout? As manufacturers of the spice, it wouldn't make sense for them to also eat that, so perhaps there is another organism involved that feeds the sand trout. and helps you create the pre-icing dough. In her essay, biologist Dr. Hetchel pointed out that most of Earth's exotic compounds come from plants, bacteria, and fungi. What if the same were true for the Oracus? There are many examples of symbiotic relationships between these. types of organisms and animals, a famous example is the leafcutter ant.

These ants act as farmers for certain species of fungi. They bring pieces of leaves to their underground nests and keep them moist so that the fungus can grow on them after the fungus digests the cellulose. on the leaves, something that ants can't do themselves, the ants eat it, so maybe there is a fungus growing underground in the sand. The water pockets of the trout, this could serve as food for them and also as a source of pre-ice mass, of course, this and that. The theories mentioned in this video are just theories, but that's what makes books like Dune so adorable once the author completes them.

Groups of fans gather to discuss their favorite parts, look for plot holes, and develop their own concepts to fill them. This video. It's been a great experiment for me, being in front of the camera is something new the whole time we were filming this. The only thing I could think about was how much normal eyebrow movement is for a human being, maybe some people know how to not feel like an alien when doing these things, but I don't, but I'm accepting feeling like an alien because I recently learned how fun it can be to make new types of shows in new formats.

I recently got to produce and star in a ridiculously ambitious, fun but still movie. Original educational nebula program called archeology Search on experimental archeologywhere my co-writer Lorraine and I compete against each other in Paleolithic tasks, from making stone tools to throwing spears and foraging for mushrooms. We do our best to learn from the best experts in experimental archeology about these things. but at the end of the day we're not that good at most of this stuff, the mushroom hunting episode was just released and you can see for yourselves how many times each of us would have died based on the mushrooms we have to collect so hard. trust.

The episode and the previous three are available exclusively on Nebula. I can't express how important Nebula is to our small business and to me as a person trying to grow, learn new things, and get out of my anxious alien comfort zone. Nebula allows me to take risks. they like this and produce videos that definitely wouldn't fit on this real science YouTube channel. They believe in me. They believe in my ideas and made archeology possible. Quest. YouTube is great for many reasons, but at the end of the day it can be suffocating. I feel penalized by the algorithm for trying new ideas, so without Nebula I probably would never have had the confidence to start appearing in videos without Nebula, our business probably wouldn't have gotten this far, so signing up for Nebula is just different than signing up. .

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