Dune movie poster
The sci-fi masterpiece "Dune" has been released for a while, in addition to marveling at the setting of its magnificent cosmic epic, the most impressive thing is the giant sandworm hidden in the desert in the movie.
Gospel for the giant phobia
According to the setting in the "Dune" novel, the giant sandworm is generally 400-500 meters long, 30-40 meters thick, and some can even grow to a kilometer long, and the "spices" snatched by various forces in the movie are actually the products of the metabolism of the sandworms.
But such an incredible monster, in the real world, actually has a prototype?
Yes, it is the "Mongolian Death Worm".
On the Mongolian plateau, there is such a terrible legend that in the deserted Gobi Desert, there is an ancient and mysterious creature "олгой-хорххой".
This worm infested in the vast Gobi sand dunes, 2-5 feet long, the size of the body is extremely thick, they can spew out a highly toxic corrosive liquid to kill, can also emit a strong current from the eyes, let any prey kill in an instant, they like to prey on camels, but also let countless Mongolian herders kill the Gobi. Such legends and stories have been passed down for centuries in the pastoral people of the Mongolian plateau, and the descriptions of them are surprisingly consistent among the various tribes of different regions.
For a hundred years, the American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, the Czech explorer Ivan McKeller, and the Expeditions of the Soviet Union, Britain and other countries have been deeply involved in the Gobi rumors of "death worms", and they want to discover and catch "death worms", but in the end they have little gain, and they have returned home sadly. So some people have proposed that the "death worm" is actually just a legend, there is no object, and some expeditions have proposed that they found a large number of uranium mines underground in some parts of Mongolia, and this "death worm" may be a group of giant horses (a possible extinct arthropod) that has a genetic mutation due to radiation.
Of course, some people have suggested that in fact, the "death worm" is actually just an undiscovered "earthworm"...
Some of the earthworms that have become extinct do have species that use venom
You see, how cute this is...
Do you think the "death worm" exists or not?