SandChigger wrote:WTF? Pay fucking attention, moron. Not every form of life in the Dune books is descended from Terrestrial life. Period.
Chig’s a bit hostile, huh? In Brazil we say: "Apelou, perdeu!" which can be roughly translated as: if you're shouting, that's because you're losing! LOL.
But, come on, Chig, you know that the bio/ecological aspect of the Chronicles is a minor one. It is simply not important enough to justify you digging into science to understand it better. It is not worth your time. So you can ignore us when we talk about the subject. Believe me, you'll not be losing too much.
That said, if you want to comment, you have to read some more. Just so people don't call me unhelpful, i'll answer your comment, but i really think it is a waste of time. You see, i do not pretend to know much about biology and don't want to talk about a subject i know only in the shallow, but you suck so much at it that you make me seem erudite hahahahahahah!
SandChigger wrote:The fact that FH made a distinction between "native" and "terraform" life is shown by this quote from Dune
Would you agree with me that the common Red Kangaroo is "native" from Australia? But still, the first marsupials didn't appear in Australia, but in China. According to your reasoning, we should say that the Red Kangaroo is NOT descendant from a chinese animal? Or we should say that the Kangaroo is chinese? But wait! Both Kangaroo and all other land animals come from ocean dwelling creatures! Should we say that none of Earth's lifeforms is "native" in terrestrial environments, being aquatic all of them?
The fact that a given species evolves to adapt to a given environment is no proof that it originates in that environment. In a theoretic universe with plenty of planets, it is completely plausible that organisms from one planet would evolve into novel species once transplanted from one planet to the other, exactly as Earth organisms have for example done when moved from one continent to another. And that could happen actually fast given the right circumstances. No matter how many quotes you find where a given organism is said to be "native", there still remains the possibility that it actually is a grand-grandson of an earthling.
Come on, man, even the Muad'dib Kangaroo Rat is from Earth!
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That said, there are lots of crappy scifi authors that simply assume that life that did completely evolve in another planet would be pretty much like earth life, anyways, and that this does not matter too much let's just go on with the story. That you could eat an alien and it would probably be nutritive. Even if Frank does this from time to time, i think the quote about "protein incompatibility" at least alludes to another point of view.
Namely, a point of view that assumes that, given a completely different evolution history, an alien lifeform is bound to be different from us in ways that we can't expect, maybe can't even comprehend. In a way, i think the whole "worm life-cycle", almost devoid of an plausible explanation -- i mean, come on, where do those worms get their energy from? this Liet guy spends his whole life studying them and he does not get a hint? -- this whole life-cycle thing is made to show this. That, and Frank was also lazy.
Anyway, the thing about the sandtrout existing in another planet where it could not progress into worm-phase is flawed, if we assume the Appendix 1 is correct about the worm phase being the reproduction stage of the species. Yes, it could be mistaken, but somehow this seems too ad-hoc to me...
And, loremaster, please note that at least a fraction of the "techno-bable" you attribute to me is actually from Frank the Man himself (sorry if i am being too orthodox ; - ). But, to be sincere, i think you lack reading into biology just like our dear Chig.
PS.: Chig i'm getting to you! BFF! Love and Kisses hahahahahhaha!