Talk:Sandworm (Dune)/Archive 1

Color

"Spice blows can be identified by a large purplish colored patch of sand, smelling strongly of cinnamon."

This was the information in a recent addition to the article (I altered the prose fit the article a little better). I don't recall spice blows ever being described as purplish, but given this editor also added information on killing sandworms from the prequels, perhaps it is from there as well? Or is it mentioned in the original series too and I've forgotten it? I'd just like some clarification to see if this is accurate information and should be left in, or is erroneous and should be removed.--QuantumDriver 06:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

This is no longer in the article, but they are described as "violet" and a source is provided in the melange article]]. — TAnthony^Talk 04:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

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I read in one of Donald Kingsbury's books that if a sandworm produced as much oxygen from carbon dioxide as they're supposed to, they would generate so much heat that they'd burst into flames. Anybody do the math?

Reply: Sandworms are supposed to be immune to high amounts of heat (as well they should be, living on the third planet from a Yellow-Giant Star!), they're even immune to lasguns and all other heat-related weapondry and are only killed by electricity because it, presumably, knocks out the neural ganglia in each section of the body. It's probably pretty improbable, at least, with our biology. After all, the sandworms aren't Terran.--QuantumDriver 21:10, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Third planet" doesn't necessarily mean it's close to the star. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Noclevername (talk • contribs) 05:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC).

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Should we have a spoiler warning in this, since in the book the origin of the spice is not known until the later chapters? --Sam

Go for it, dude! Ellsworth 22:24, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

wildlife of Arakis?

The Fremen have learned by observing the other wildlife of Arakis...

and yet Arrakis has:

Giant sandworms (Shai-Hulud, (later Shaitan)) and their immature forms of sandtrout and sandplankton were the only fauna on the planet

and later

Early in the history of Arrakis, the Imperium made several attempts to terraform the planet, which resulted in an abundance of Terran desert life on the planet

Should other wildlfe be other humans What other wildlife is/was there? -Wikibob | Talk 15:46, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

The Muad'Dib kangaroo rats are one example of imported desert life, along with various forms of bats, carrion birds and, if I recall, donkeys or mules are mentioned at one point in the first book. All of these imported to Arrakis and native to Earth and are referred to as having ancient terran ancestry. Theoretically, their residence on the planet pre-dated the Fremen's, so the Fremen still learned how to survive on the planet by observing how natural desert animals had adapted to the planet-wide desert of Arrakis. --QuantumDriver 8 July 2005 18:48 (UTC)

Article Overhaul

I've done a complete overhaul of this article, removing some of the questionable material, or at least bringing up that it might be questioned and adding a lot more meat. The article now discusses the life-cycle more in-depth, as well as melange and Muad'Dib and Leto II. I am about to make another edit now to include crysknives. Hopefully the prose is also improved and we have a much more substantial article here.

Baleen?

Why should sandworms have baleen? Baleen whales expel water through baleen, leaving the plankton behind. Plankton is much larger than water molecules. That's why it works. If sandworms are consuming microorganisms smaller than grains of sand, such a filter is not useful.

Some material belongs in Melange

Melange and sandworm exploitation by humans, or at least the first half of it, seems to belonge in Melange. --Taejo 14:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a reasonable alteration. While certainly there should still be information in this on Sandworm exploitation, the bulk of the description of harvesting probably should be in Melange, or, possibly, in it's own article, if we might prefer to leave Melange to discuss the properties of the drug and a new article such as Melange Harvesting for the harvesting process. --QuantumDriver 07:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Muad'Dib and the sandtrout

It seems that the last section on Paul, Leto, and the sandworms seems to imply that Leto had an ability to merge with the sandtrout that Paul lacked. My reading of Children of Dune, judging from Leto's conversation with the ancestral memory of his father, is that Paul refused to merge with the sandtrout, because he could not bear to walk the Golden Path that that act would begin. His failure to do so wasn't because of any lack of ability. Am I wrong? --Skoosh 16:53, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

This is certainly accurate, but Paul never saturated himself with spice to the extent Leto was to enable the merging, my aim in the article was to make the point that it was the spice that made this possible, and the Atreides high-tolerance that allowed them to initiate the Golden Path. If it seems unclear I should certainly say we ought to do our best to improve it. --QuantumDriver 09:42, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it was the fact that Paul (and thus perhaps Leto as well) were Kwisatz Haderach that allowed them to initiate the Golden Path. Had other people with the same saturation in spice attempted it then sure they may have turned into a worm that could live for 3,500 years... but they would not have had the ability to see into the future and thus dominate the entire universe enough to make the Golden path possible. Enigmatical 23:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I am convinced that there is no way that other people could become a worm shaped figure. Only a Kwisatz Haderach was able to do this. Dont have pdf files of the books but using my common sense I can tell there would be many more worm people in the books and thats something that cannot be explained by the fact that FH left much to your imationation. I do not consider this a detail and also many people would be eager to live for centuries, it is just to appealing for many, expecially if they lack of precience.

It wouldn't surprise me (and this is speculation) that the sand trout were in some way poisonous... exactly as spice is poisonous to those who ingest the water's of life. Just as the reverent mothers transform the poison within their bodies so too would Leto have done the same thing in order to make the merge possible. I dont specifically think the spice itself was the reason, it certainly isn't made clear in the books that this process only occurred due to the saturation in spice, but it does seem to give some inclination towards only those who were to walk the golden path could have done this or would even have known this was possible. Thus Paul turned away from it, unable to put the universe through 3,500 years of tyranical torture (believing the ends do not outweigh the means), while Leto saw the greater good in the long run and thus accepted his part in walking the path (believing that the ends DO INDEED justify the means). I dont think its a good idea to put speculation into the article stating the spice did it as that wouldn't be accurate IMHO. Enigmatical 22:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is not clear whether the body of sandtrout is poisonous, it's simply never mentioned one way or either. However, the syrup that sandtrout excrete was commonly eaten by Fremen children (cf. CoD), so they couldn't be too poisonous. --maru (talk) contribs 01:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a difference between eating the odd excretion from a sand trout and having hundreds of them completely cover your body and bond with you at a genetic level ;) Enigmatical 23:19, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

It's still all speculation, though. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Noclevername (talk • contribs) 05:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC).

Sandtrout or Sandworms produce the spice?

I have to admit I am confused by all of this. I had thought it was the death of a sandworm which created the spice, and that the spice blow was the result of either the dying worms final moments or the gas build up was the result of the dead worms processes going out of control. While it isn't clear, why would they want to take a fully grown sandworm to Chapterhouse if it was the trout which produced the spice??? Secondly, the "water of life" comes directly from the death of a young sandworm, which is assumed to be a high concentration of liquid spice is it not? This again would seem to suggest that spice is indeed something that comes from worms not trout. Enigmatical 23:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

They drowned the worm in Chapterhouse's puny desert, which caused it to dissolve into sand trout, which then would go out and start sealing off water (initiating the cycle as on Arrakis), I thought. --maru (talk) contribs 01:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the sand trout will turn the planet into a desert, but they dont themselves produce spice. I thought spice was produced by the sandworms as is referenced several times throughout the books where people can smell the melange when being around the sandworms and their "furnace" generates heat from within. There was also mention of the God Emperor giving Siona the waters of life from his own body. If it is indeed the trout which produce the spice then nobody would ever need a fully grown sandworm would they. Enigmatical 04:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you guys are discussing this. MY understanding seems to differ in a few details from yours - but those details seem to clear up some things. My understanding of the spice cycle is as follows:

1) Several Sandtrout find water and encapsulate it. 2) The water is transformed by the Sandtrout into "pre-spice mass." 3) Then- and here is the important part- the Sandtrout MIGHT or MIGHT NOT explode in a spice-blow. If they explode, the water evaporates and the spice is left over. If they do not explode, then they grow together into a baby Sandworm. (Note that the article as it currently exists says that the Sandtrout always explode, and those who survive make the new Sandworm. I think that is incorrect...?)

This explains many things: First - adult worms smell strongly of Spice, because they were grown from the unexploded pre-spice mass and Sandtrout. (Thus, the adult worms don't "make" the Spice, but they are compossed of its essence.) Second, it also explains why baby Sandworms vomit the concentrated spice "Water of Life" when drowned - it is again related directly to the pre-spice mass of the Sandtrout. And lastly, it also explains why it is possible to take adult Sandworms to other planets to produce more spice - assuming one drowns the Sandworm in spice-enriched water, forcing it to "fall apart" into Sandtrout again. (So getting a full Sandworm is more useful than grabbing a single Sandtrout - who can't create a Sandworm all by itself.)

I also just read the proto-Dune story "Spiceworld" (see "The Road to Dune"), where we see the spice-foreman English cut open a Sandtrout and drink the goo inside. He immediately went into a prescient fit and got himself killed. Though not cannonical (how does that relate to the Fremen children eating Sandtrout goo?), it does suggest that the essence of the spice-narcotic is contained in the Sandtrout themselves - hence their ability to make the pre-spice mass, etc. Thoughts?

Half-Life 2

Are antlions really adverse to water? During the game I noticed some of them swimming. Elenthel 16:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

They die if they enter the water. The "swimming" animation to which you refer is them drowning.Virogtheconq 14:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Nausicaa ohmu

It isn't certain if Hayao Miyazaki was inspired by the sandworms (and other aspects of Dune) for his manga and film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds; I'm speaking mainly of the giant insectoid ohmu. Just wondering if this should be listed under derivative works or not.

Was Dune even translated into Japanese in time for Miyazaki to read it? Besides, the ohmu were just really big beetles, I thought. -- Gwern (contribs) 03:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Size?

When Paul is performing his riding test, he notes "...[he] realized he had never seen a maker this large, never heard of one this size. It appeared to be more than half a league long, and the rise of the sandwave at its cresting head was like the approach of a mountain."

That would put the worm at around 2800 meters. Any comments? --Falcorian ^(talk) 00:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to add it in then. --Falcorian ^(talk) 06:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Sandworm Lifecycle

I notice that in the Life Cycle section of this article it does not mention the fact that sandworms disolve back into sandtrout, presumably more snadtrout than during its birth (it has grown), on contact with water (sufficient water).

I think this should be added and a spoiler warning be added as well.

TPage 21:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC) T. Page

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Sandworm (Dune)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

"B" - however it could urgently do with some more in-line citations and referencing :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:30, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 08:30, 13 June 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 15:45, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Reproduction

I'm not an expert on the Dune universe, but did Herbert ever describe how sandworms reproduce? From his writing we learn that the sandplankton feed upon the spice and (if they survive) become sandtrout. Sandtrout encyst the water, produce melange and ultimately mature into sandworms. Logically the sandworm should produce more sandplankton, keeping the cycle going, but instead we are told that it FEEDS upon it. How then does the cycle continue?

This is the only solution I can think of: The worm DOES give birth to sandplankton while devouring the sandplankton of other worms, thus advantaging its own offspring. This would also explain why the worms defend their own territories and attack the territories of other worms. Confined to its own "turf", a worm can only survive by eating its own offspring, thus making it less likely to pass on its own DNA: To be biologically successful, a worm must feed on other worm's offspring while defending its own (i.e. keeping other worms out of its own territory).

However, this still doesn't explain what the sandplankton/sandtrout/sandworm's primary food source. Sandplankton eat spice and become sandtrout. Sandtrout produce spice and become sandworms. Sandworms eat sandplankton. It's a closed system - how does energy coming in?

Possible solution: The melange, once produced by the sandtrout stores energy from heat before it is devoured by the sandplankton. Thus like most life on Earth, like on Dune is ultimately solar powered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.241.199.124 (talk) 12:24, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Sandworm description

They are cylindrical creatures with no significant appendages, though with trifaceted jaws. Are the jaws described this way anywhere in the books ?, or is this taken from their depiction Lynch's Dune. If so then it's not canon. Harani66 13:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

General tightness, wording, some wtf moments

For instance:

Their experiences will be discussed below.

Not necessary.

What about adding the information from Brian Herbert's Legends of Dune prequel series? There it tells that a Zensunni inhabitant of Dune named Selim was the first to ride a sandworm.

Also, what does Paul Muad'dib's melange tolerance levels? It seems like more extended backstory than is needed.

I'm a wee bit new and could use some direction here as to whether I should really edit this or not. I didn't see much in the manual of style or the guidelines. --Desert moon 22:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

For dealing with BH's stuff, we seem to have settled on a consensus to cover it as thoroughly as FH's actual work but to clearly delimit where BH/KJA's stuff begins and ends (defaulting to FH stuff, in other words). --Gwern (contribs) 01:42 8 October 2007 (GMT)

References

This has been mentioned in other comments here, but the article needs a lot of references, probably line-by-line in most cases. There are no specific sources for the large amounts of "scientific" material and descriptions, and I have a feeling there is information from the Herbert novels, film, miniseries, prequels, Dune Encyclopedia and someone's imagination all mixed together. I'm putting this on my own to-do list, but in the meantime if anyone is feeling adventurous ...

Oh, and I fully intend to "be bold" and merge the sandtrout stub back into this article; there is really not that much unique material there (if any) and I can't image that there's an article's worth of material that could ever be added. — TAnthony^Talk 19:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've merged sandtrout in and begun a major rewrite, including proper quotes and sources. I've removed a lot of the extraneous Melange material that doesn't directly relate to the sandworms and is already in that main article. — TAnthony^Talk 04:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

In re: citation for Herbert's creative use of Arabic words, what would count as a source? To me, as someone who reads Arabic, it is immediately clear and obvious what Shai-Hulud means. It is not particularly fluent or elegant Arabic; it is in fact the kind of phrase someone wanting an exotic name for a far-future setting with extremely loose connections to real-world cultures might make up with an introductory Arabic textbook. Additionally, not many years ago, I went through a dictionary looking for other words that could fit. (The letters "h" and "d" could represent any of three and four letters respectively, and there are several combinations of vowels that -u-u- could conceivably stand for.) Because an Arabic dictionary is a) not readily usable by anyone who doesn't understand the root system, and anyway b) completely unusable to anyone without basic literacy in the script, what kind of citation could work? --Yunuswesley (talk) 06:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Technically, we should be citing a reliable source (book, magazine, reputable website) that makes the correlation between Herbert's terms and Arabic words being stated in the article. An editor trying to interpret Herbert's meanings/intentions and make connections (no matter how excellent their knowledge of Arabic) is basically original research. The exceptions would of course be in the instances in which Herbert has actually defined his terms and those definitions are obviously similar to real-world definitions. I've debated this issue in other articles, but made my case in detail here: Talk:List of Dune terminology#Arabic. My favorite example of such inappropriate "translation" is one editor's assertion here that Herbert intended "Feyd-Rautha" to mean "flood of dung," LOL. — TAnthony^Talk 23:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. In classical Arabic, keeping to Herbert's romanization, "flood (more like excess, abundance) of dung" would be feyd ar-rauth; rauth being the collective, and definite in this kind of construction; rautha is a specific piece of dung! I see your point about sophomoric attempts at stating authorial intent without documentation or original research elsewhere. The varieties of contemporary Arabic and the kinds of grammatical mistakes a non-arabic speaker working from a textbook would make certainly present an interpretive puzzle. I of course am simply balking at *my* superior education and literacy being lumped in with college kids in Arabic 101 and other fans doing dictionary translation! I'm taking the note out. Yunuswesley (talk) 02:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm impressed by your grasp of Arabic, but I don't see what it has to do with an article on Shai-hulud, maybe in a reference source to the book? Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 15:08, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

secondary sources?

"This article relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources."...I disagree, as a fan who has been re-reading the series since the 1970's. The first book is the only real source for this subject. The other books in the series just echo what is said in DUNE. You can't look up several studies by several prominent experts and cite their points of view on Shai-Hulud!

The pieces of the article cited as sequels and prequels, and the section called Leto II, belong in an article about the Dune Series, not to define and describe Shai-hulud. This is suppose to be a description of an imaginary creature, not an animal facts article, or a sub-plot in one spin-off of DUNE! Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 14:44, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

While Herbert's many "facts" about sandworms are pretty well cited back to his writing, the secondary sources being sought are more to assert the notability of this topic as deserving its own article, and to this level of detail. This would include sources noting how iconic the sandworms are of the Dune series, reviews and analysis discussing them and the spice as metaphors, etc. I know there is stuff out there. I've been meaning to go thru Touponce's book Frank Herbert for information to improve this and other Dune articles, but haven't yet. As far as the Leto section goes, I think it shows how the sandwort concept evolves in the series. The prequel/sequel stuff does the same thing, though it is appropriately short as I agree it has less impact on the topic as a whole.— TAnthony^Talk 22:00, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm hip to your point about how iconic the worms are, but the Leto II incident was about one worm out of the whole species. Example: If I wiki'd the word "deer", I wouldn't expect to get a whole backstory on the plot of Bambi in with the habitable zones, diet, and reproduction of deer in general...I'd find the deer stuff under "deer", and the Bambi story under "Bambi". Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 22:31, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Ha, that's a funny but totally not-the-same-thing analogy. Everything ever written about deer is not confined to six books, lol ... but of course, Bambi is mentioned at Deer#In television and modern culture because he is a notable one. Within the context of the extended Dune story, the Leto worm is the last worm because his terraforming kills the rest, and all worms after him are born from the sandtrout he sheds when he dies so ... he is a notable part of their life cycle and evolution over the course of Herbert's six novels. I'm not sure how you could think otherwise. I'm not saying the article is written perfectly as-is, but it's supposed to be more than a description of "the worms are big and can eat sandcrawlers", it has to cover the whole of the topic, which includes all notable description and plot but also outside analysis, cultural influence, etc.— TAnthony^Talk 00:22, 8 November 2015 (UTC)