If you live on the planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, seeing giant sandworms in person is easy: grab a thumper, set it off, and sit back to wait; however, in real life, they are known as eunicids or bristle worms or some other type of worm as they seem to be the inspiration for the Shai-Hulud.
These worms are the true rulers of the planet, and humans are mere extractors of the resources they leave behind. However, they are too valuable to be left behind, which raises questions about their existence in the real world (as it wouldn’t be the first time that real animals have inspired science fiction). The sandworms of Dune are colossal and could exist in the real world. Nature spoke with paleontologist Luke Parry from the University of Oxford, UK. He studies worms from the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, which together lasted from about 540 million to 443 million years ago, to find out if sandworms truly have a real existence, although they are not exactly a single type of worm.
According to the paleontologist’s assertion, there are annelid worms that reach several meters in length called eunicids and are quite twisty, and some of them are ambush predators (they eat octopuses, squids, vertebrates) and resemble the shape of sandworms a bit. Regarding size, it is known that some earthworms also grow large known as Megascolides because their greatness can be up to 2 meters. Regarding the teeth that sandworms form, in real life, there are some with the same characteristics called priapulids.
These are the species that built those first complex burrows in the early Cambrian. They use all these teeth, called scalids, in a proboscis to crawl through the burrows. Additionally, sandworms like Alitta and ragworms have teeth to catch their prey. Some leeches have teeth too. This means that in reality, the sandworms of Dune are an inspiration from various important terrestrial crawling animals for the Earth.
The Dune movie shows us that sandworms completely change their planet by excreting the valuable drug called spice. Nothing different from how worms in the real world excavated in sediments more than 500 million years ago and changed marine ecosystems forever. It is part of what we call the Cambrian explosion, one of the planet’s most profound changes, when they gave oxygen to the Earth.
Oxygen can enter the sediments, and complex animal life can live there. It opens up new ways of making a living. Worms are part of this fundamental restructuring of the world. It is also not foreign to reality the fact that worms can detect their prey with sand vibrations and even manipulate the sand in this way. After all, these are adaptations that are not especially strange, especially for worms that have been moving and living for years.
The Inspiration for the Creation of Dune’s Sandworms
According to a report published by Vanity Fair, Villeneuve wanted the worm (Shai-hulud, for intimates and Fremen) to be imposing but also to convey “a certain kind of intelligence” that would inspire “respect and some kind of spirituality.” Somewhat complicated, moreover, by the fact that science fiction illustrators have been depicting various versions of the animal since 1965.
After designer Patrice Vermette and Villeneuve himself had defined the appearance of the creature, digital effects supervisor Paul Lambert spent a year defining its movements. Although his first reference was earthworms and snakes, he ended up ruling that the worm would lack “grandeur” with those models, so he ended up referring to whales. And also at Villeneuve’s suggestion, to sharks. Or, rather, to the shark from Jaws.
This story was written in Spanish by Perla Vallejo in Ecoosfera.
