Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

If Shai-Hulud subsisted off of sand-plankton that ate the melange spice, which itself came from the sandtrout and got a positive net energy via exposure to the sun, why did the worms need teeth?

Possibly to catch things, like people, and hold them in their mouths until they dried out and were suitable for swallowing, or could be worn down to something digestible by the passage of sand.

I dont think Herbert ever said that they were for chewing.

Hangover from an earlier stage in evolution? (Or FH just thought it was cool and didn't see a problem with it more likely...)

Omphalos wrote:Possibly to catch things, like people, and hold them in their mouths until they dried out and were suitable for swallowing, or could be worn down to something digestible by the passage of sand.

I dont think Herbert ever said that they were for chewing.

I agree with this description, the teeth should perform a filtering function, like the nose hairs. I think the Blue Whale has filtering "teeth"

It's not a perfectly worked out system.

Of course, sand is not a liquid, like water, so something like baleen ("whalebone") wouldn't stand up to the wear and tear.

So it goes.

Mr Dictionary says, "Baleen whales include the rorquals, humpback, right whales, and gray whale. Also called whalebone whale. Suborder Mysticeti, order Cetacea: three families and ten species."

SandChigger wrote:It's not a perfectly worked out system.

Of course, sand is not a liquid, like water, so something like baleen ("whalebone") wouldn't stand up to the wear and tear.

The more important question is what they are capable of stand up to when still in the worms mount, and how swiftly they grow back when knocked out. Think of sharks, who have teeth waiting in reserve for just such an emergency and can grow them before needed.

(You restarted that one several times, didn't you? )

Sharks ... that's a great example. Still doesn't help much concerning how those teeth would be useful in straining out sand plankton, but what the hey!

Baraka Bryan wrote:they have teeth because it furthered the plot by allowing the creation of crysknives....

Go ahead and spoil our fun!

Fucking anthropic principle.

:sigh: You mean they were only a lowly plot devise.

I think the teeth are only for defense. It's a defense mechanism.

Baraka Bryan wrote:they have teeth because it furthered the plot by allowing the creation of crysknives....

Didn't Sloeman say that once?

Nekhrun wrote:Didn't Sloeman say that once?

Who could tell?

Lisan Al-Gaib wrote:I think the teeth are only for defense. It's a defense mechanism.

Against what? Sudden Sunday afternoon skyhooks?

I don't know...We don't know anything from where the sandworms came. Who knows the sandworms had a predator in its original planet.

But a new idea come to me now: The sandworms are extremely territorial creatures, when they found another one in its region they attacks. So, the teeth can be for that: To fight against another sandworms.

That actually makes more sense than using them for feeding.

Still, I'm curiously attracted to the image of a giant fat man in a space boat with a ginormous (sp?) fishing rod trying to catch a sandworm for bait ... imagine what he must be fishing for!

SandChigger wrote:That actually makes more sense than using them for feeding.

Still, I'm curiously attracted to the image of a giant fat man in a space boat with a ginormous (sp?) fishing rod trying to catch a sandworm for bait ... imagine what he must be fishing for!

The Normacle

SandChigger wrote:(You restarted that one several times, didn't you? )

God no, or I wouldn't have misspelled half of the fucking words I used.

SandChigger wrote:Sharks ... that's a great example. Still doesn't help much concerning how those teeth would be useful in straining out sand plankton, but what the hey!

I don't think that they would be useful in straining sand plankton. Pardon me if I implied that. What I did say, I think, is that they would be useful for stopping giant bags of water, like people. Like a gizzard where a bird churns up food with little pebbles, only the teeth stop harmful and painful water-filled sacks and give them time to dry out, then get swallowed. Plankton just cruises on by the whole time, probably helping wear down the corpse, or whatever is caught.

Or maybe they are the worm's version of the appendix

Rule of cool.

Used for fighting eachother? They are extremely territorial.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Used for fighting eachother? They are extremely territorial.

That was what I said.

Lisan Al-Gaib wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Used for fighting eachother? They are extremely territorial.

That was what I said.

Oops, sorry, I must have only read the first paragraph in that post!

KJAs Newer and Better UBER-ULTRA Crysknife.

Well, the sands contain rocks too...but I guess it could be rationed as an evolutionary leftover.

I think worms usually have some kind of tiny "teeth" for borrowing and processing their food etc, could be wrong though.

inhuien wrote:KJAs Newer and Better UBER-ULTRA Crysknife.

LOL! Very nice

It's not for fighting- as the teeth are going to be on the inside- if the worms used their teeth in a fight- then their opponent would have to get inside of them in order to use the teeth on them- teeth or not, being inside of your opponent's body is a clear sign the fight isn't going to well for you (unless your a anal rapist, in which case it's going swimmingly)

Almost certainly not for hunting prey.... you don't need that many teeth to take down animals. Not so certain a crysknife can chew up metal, even if cleverly constructed like the materials for a conch shell for strength- gonna have to involve some impressive enzymes and crushing weight.

I think it's more inline with what we think of later stages of the digestive system. The teeth holds the hard sand there- the sand is static yet rigid, while the whole worm moves.... electrical sparks and bolts occur, churning the rocks, tumbling over one another- static electricity is recycled over and over again, walls or gut absorbs some materials, rest is vomited/shitted out in form of sand.

Movement of animals is highly indicative of where the sand plankton is.... it's like zooplankton in the ocean- you concentrate zooplankton with the right frequency, feeder fish come, feeder fish comes, bigger fish come to eat the feeder fish- so on and so on. Hearing sound is also gonna warn them when competitors are nearby- or when someone is screwing around with a nest.

A crysknife has to be harder than most surface rocks. It's design doesn't suggest a prehensile capacity, resembling the teeth of a seaslug more- for one directional gripping. Sure each rib likely had many rows of these.

Question arises- how far did a sandworm have to travel until it converted it's solid rock catch into granular waste? And how did it absorb the sand plankton without a liquid based digestive system- almost certain electricity will be involved (thus making the teeth non-conductive) in the process as describe above- but what else?