In 2018, scientists discovered a new species of earthworm in Australian forests. It would seem nothing unusual, only their size can reach more than 3 meters! You don’t go fishing with this. And in the ocean, various worms grow up to 40-60 meters! Real giants, at least in length. Hence the fear of some people of these creatures reminiscing Shai-Hulud in Frank Herbert’s “Dune”.
In the local fertile soil, Australian worms grow up to 3 meters ! With such dimensions, their movement becomes audible from the surface. While walking through the eucalyptus forests, you can hear a soft champing underfoot.
However, chthonic creatures from the bottom of the ocean were able to overcome the Australian fauna. For example, Bobbit ‘s bristle worm. This 6-meter offspring of deep-sea fauna hides in the sand most of the time, pulling a nasty mug to the surface. A creepy muzzle with antennae and fangs looks, to put it mildly, scary.
But Lineus longissimus got closest to that very image of the great worm. Its length reaches 15 meters! This is the longest known animal on Earth! But we would not call it the largest – the diameter of this giant hose is only one centimeter, although it can stretch its body up to 60 meters and shoot a sticky tube with poisonous hooks. Sometimes it seems that evolution is mocking us.
Our planet’s terrible worms of do not end there. Parasitic worms, such as tapeworms and nematodes, have gone into growth very much, but let’s not touch them. There is not a single stroke in them which can compare to that legendary image of the father of all worms, the real prototype of the giant worm Shai-Hulud from Dune in Gobi desert.
The Mongolian cryptid
In the Mongolian Gobi desert lives a cryptid who, according to locals, has a whole range of superpowers. For example, it can shock, spit acid, spew flames, and gnaw through iron structures. At the same time, the size of the creature described by eyewitnesses varies greatly – from 1 meter to 20 meters.
The nomadic tribes of Kazakhstan and Mongolia reported attacks by these creatures back in the Middle Ages. Travelers often spent the night among the sand dunes and were attacked by worms. Thanks to the huge amount of information collected in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was possible to draw up portraits of these mysterious cryptids.
It is a rather thick, very long worm, the head of which is represented by a large mouth with several channels. Each of them is responsible for its own role: spitting acid, fire or lightning!
The locals called it the “gut of death”, since encounters with these worms always mean injuries that remain with the victims for life. During the day, the desert is safe, but at night, these creatures pull their heads out of the sand and wait for an animal or person to pass nearby.
At this moment, with a sharp movement, these mysterious inhabitants jump out and attack the intended targets. After that, they grab it with their mouth and drag it deep into their bowels.
One could laugh at these Mongolian superstitions as much as one likes, but in 2016 a joint expedition of enthusiasts from Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia to the Gobi Desert took place.
Participants claim that at night they saw something huge crawling under the sands, and in the morning a small worm tried to attack one of the camels. People arrived in time to help and chopped the creature with a shovel. The materials taken were examined in a laboratory in Ulaanbaatar.
It turned out that the samples do not belong to any known biological species. Moreover, the creature itself is anaerobic and consists of 85% silicon and copper. Instead of blood, the worm turned out to have low concentrated hydrocyanic or hydrocyanic acid.
Mongolian scientists believe that once upon a time a large asteroid fell into the desert. It was icy, thanks to which the contained eggs of these creatures safely landed on Earth.
The worm’s population has taken root and still successfully exists in Mongolia, and since 2012, eyewitnesses have observed the manifestation of these cryptids in Kazakhstan.
Given the extraterrestrial origin of the “guts of death”, one can quite believe that these creatures can spew fire, spit acid and accumulate charges of electricity.
In the end, it just needs chemical elements and reactions, so there is no magic in it.
Who knows, maybe such creatures once lived or still live on Mars or another planet in neighboring galaxies from where an asteroid could fly. Perhaps the worms from the famous epic movie “Dune” could quite well have their prototypes in real life.
