Origins, Biology & Life Cycle of Dune Sandworms

A sandworm is a fictional extraterrestrial creature that appears in the Dune novels written by Frank Herbert, first introduced in Dune (1965). Sandworms are colossal, worm-like creatures that live on the desert planet Arrakis. The sandworms' larvae produce a drug called "melange" (known colloquially as "the spice"), the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe because it makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. Melange deposits are found in the sand seas of Arrakis, where the sandworms live and hunt, and harvesting the spice from the sand is a dangerous activity because sandworms are aggressive and territorial. Harvesting vehicles must be airlifted in and out of the sand sea in order to evade sandworm attacks. The struggle over the production and supply of melange is a central theme of the Dune saga. In this video, we briefly describe its life cycle as per reliable sources.

[Concreteowl]

You miss a very important aspect of the worm. It is responsible for the breathable air on a world with virtually no precipitation beyond mild dew.

[davidmistoffelees]

Sandworms feed on sand zooplankton; this is explained in the books; they're filter feeders.

[mattsen]

sandworms from Dune > sandworms from tremors

[Rammstein.]

One small note, the Alaskan Bull Worm....is actually the smallest on this list (once you remember the characters from SpongeBob aren't human sized)

Also, "Big, scary, and pink" 🤣

[chamorvenigo]

1. Y'all could consider Sandtrout/Sandworm from the point of planet terraforming roles. These creatures have to be able to terraform a water-filled planet (like Earth into a desert planet). Here's how it goes:

2. Sandtrout
= is not the same creature as Sandworm.
= produce green pre-spice.
= loves water, able to swim in water.
= can burrow deep into Earth to find water
= band together to create a leather-bag-colony.
= converts water with their green pre-spice into orange pre-spice
= once their leather-bag-colony matures, a spice-blow would occur
= mature sandtrouts gets blown into the surface, probably die, and mixed with the orange pre-spice to become spice.
= unknown whether new baby sandtrouts are born underground, on the body of a Sandworm, or whatever else. Frank was not a biologist, he's not specific about this.

3. Medium Sandworm (3-15 meters)
= produces blue water-of-life when drowned, so it's allergic to water.
= when sandtrouts has exhausted all the water in their ecosystem, they may choose to evolve into sandworm. Sandworm breaks rock formations so that sandtrouts can travel to new areas to consume water.
= when sandworm encounters a new source of water, they die, turning the water into blue which attracts sandtrouts.

4. Giant Sandworm (Shai Hulud)
= a combination of sandworm and sandtrouts
= their main purposes are to break the bigger rocks, guard the desert, and act as vectors for the migration of sandtrouts over large distances.
= due to their role as dessert guardians, the energy consumption of these creatures shouldn't suffice with the consumption of sand plankton and krills, or photosynthesis. The math doesn't work out. It is better to imagine that the Sandworms have Evangelion S2 Engine organ which can generate limitless power for whatever the plot that the story requires.

[phoenixbabbitt]

“Worm like orgasms”- man who made this video

[beberivera]

So Spice is pretty much sand trout poop?!

[gingeranagram]

Are we just gonna ignore that this fool literally put the Alaskan Bull Worm at the end of the size-comparison chart?! 🤣

[Mooza]

So, , water is fatal, but they eat people? Water is fatal but they eat machines that will contain water in various ways?

[eleven]

A lot of good pictures that never seen before, but a little holes/miss steps in the lore, good video!

[stephenshanebeaty]

The whole idea that sand trout could somehow link ass to mouth forming a ring and that's somehow going to trap oceans worth of water under sand.

[SpaceRaptorsInfiniteAR]

Awesome video!!! Also did you mean to say organism?

[maryjaneperry]

6:46 Sponge Bob worm is bigger than the dune worm

[sazaria]

if water is fatal to sandworm, than isnt eating a human that contains water would kill em? lol

[craigsurette]

The glaring Sandworm shaped elephant in the room, is why does an autotrophic species like the Sandworm evolve teeth and the ability to hunt via very well honed vibration sensitivity?
Teeth and hunting senses imply its an ambush predator, but of what?

[frank]

If water kills them....then what happens when " Paul" transforms the planit?

[mortuusponduus]

It always bothered me that no one seems to agree on what the Sand worms mouth looks like, one of the pictures he showed had a tongue, A TONGUE!? I kinda just head cannon that as the sand trout evolve they start with the mouth flaps but fill in and grow out of them as they get bigger

[battlesheep]

Note that "Terraform" means to make Earth-like, it's more apt to say the sand trouts Arrakisformed the planet.

[sekuroz]

So humans being mainly water would actually damage the sand worms

[fredkelly]

It makes more sense that the worms are from Arrakis. If they came from elsewhere would that not be another dessert planet? And what is the point of going to Arrakis to mutate when they would be more ecologically in tune with the planet if that was their actual home. What they had done on Arrakis they could do to almost any other planet given certain conditions but having them a part of the natural evolution of life on Dune is much more satisfying.