I… uh… I think that’s another film, right there.
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Maggie, the thing is, there are no herbivores. There never was, due to the lack of vegetation. It’s carnivores all the way down.
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Unless the animal is mostly hollow…?
Star Wars started out as a homage to pulp SF serials and the like of Planet Stories comics.
Trying to make it scientifical and factitious just ruins the fun.
Also, beneath the shifting sands of Tatooine is a 7.6 meter deep layer of Foodonium, an edible substance resulting from a runaway nanotech experiment back in the 5th Snydoolian Dynasty.
Also, water pills. Like food pills, but for water.
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Sure. But photosynthesis isn’t that efficient. They’d still run a huge deficit, even one a sunny world like Tatooine.
If you check the article Elysia chlorotica - Wikipedia, you’ll see that the sea slugs you cite don’t get an obviously noticeable benefit from their stolen chlorophyll.
The Banthas have log hair because it keeps them cool during the day warm during the nights.
The Sarlaac is a bioengeneered torture device whose creators died out.
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I like mallyboons idea that it may be in the latter stages of environmental collapse.
But, clearly there is water somewhere. Maybe, the groundwater is full of some sort of life (bacteria? etc) that doesn’t require light and surfaces in pools somewhere. That would make it good for food/water in one source.
The thing that I find most interesting, is that we find life in much more bizarre and extreme circumstances than we usually observe in fiction. Meaning, even if it seems far fetched in Starwars, those lifeforms could have even more unexpected ways of coping with and surviving in their environment than we can even imagine.
I’m confused: why exactly is the introductory anecdote about an elephant uncomfortable in the heat “(and, more significantly, the dryness)” of the desert important when dealing with the accuracy of sci-fi movies when the post later makes it clear that there nothing really unrealistic about large animals adapting to hot, dry conditions?
Well photosynthesis as we know it on Earth isn’t very efficient, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be more efficient. If they need similar calories to an elephant (about 70k per day) and get, say 14 hours of sunlight, that’s about the solar energy hitting Earth over about six square meters. It sounds like they’d need nearly 100% solar energy absorption, which is pretty far fetched, I’ll admit. But if they have lower caloric needs, the energy from the Tatooine sun is a bit higher, then we might be able to bring it down to needing photosynthesis about as efficient as our best solar cells. Nothing living on Earth does that, but at least we can’t say it’s an absurdity.
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You’ve mistaken the nature of the critique. It’s not: this movie (trilogy, and the EU) got the ecology wrong, therefore it sucks like a sarlacc!
It’s: That was a great movie (trilogy), I really enjoyed it, and I’m going to think about it some more: Hmm, how would a desert planet work with such large animals, I wonder…?
You’re not wrong for just enjoying it; you enjoy what you enjoy. You’re not even wrong for not thinking about it critically. But by the same token, neither is Maggie or anyone else wrong for enjoying it and thinking critically about it. That’s how we enjoy the movies we love, as well as how we hate the movies we hate. It’s just a thing we do. You’re welcome not to join in.
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It’s not an antithetical anecdote, it’s an anecdote to introduce the ideas of thinking about evolution and ecology in the context of fictional alien environments. The elephant isn’t adapted to hot and dry, she’s adapted to hot and humid, and loading her up with fur isn’t enough to make her a desert animal. Camels are big animals, but they look like camels and not elephants because of the adaptions they’ve made to living hot and dry.
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Yes, but when we actually get to the thinking of evolution and ecology, it turns out that there’s nothing all that implausible about large, hairy animals living in hot, dry environments (even if it isn’t a good idea to take animals that have evolved to live in hot, humid environments and stick them in hot, dry environments while making them wear fur coats).
I like how the intro doesn’t intrigue by saying “guess why?”, but gives a short answer.
Also, wrong double letter in sarlacc.
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I agree that mallyboons seems to be on the right track. For there to be sand, or fine dirt, you have to employ one of two types of erosion - either wind or water. One of them had a lot of time to work on the planet to create all those dunes you see in the movie.
So it makes sense to suggest that Tatooine was once a planet covered in a shallow sea, but now the water is gone. I suggest that an alien species (possibly the ancestors of the Tusken Raiders) could have used the planet as a source for water if their own water became irreparably contaminated. Over-farming of the water left the planet a desert.
Like the Atacama Desert I posted about, there is moisture in the atmosphere of Tatooine. Luke Skywalker’s own family operates moisture farming equipment to collect that moisture. The food farms on the planet are hydroponic and are located underground where temperatures are more stable. (On Earth, it’s common to build/burrow underground when you’re a desert dweller and seeking milder temps.)
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There is a bit of a crossed wire here in that this article is pointing out that we don’t see any primary producers in this ecosystem, and then another bit of the carnival is about exploring the biology of Tatooine’s primary producers established outside the movies.
Naturally, this leads one to conclude that not all of Tatooine is quite as inhospitable as the Jundland Wastes where the Lars’ family made their home- presumably it’s the Empty Quarter (or Empty Equatorial Band) of Tatooine, and any life there is seasonal, in transit, or is dug in for reasons unassociated with the weather (maybe the Lars sell water to Mos Eisley, sited at the equator for the momentum boost to departing freighters?)
There are lots of situations in Earth’s ocean where we see an “inverted biomass pyramid,” where most of the organic matter in an ecosystem is concentrated in large animals. In productive areas, it occurs when the primary producers and lower-level consumers are efficient but short lived, and persist in refuges. Undisturbed reef ecosystem can have up to 85% of their biomass locked up in sharks and groupers, with few smaller fish hiding and the producers being largely invisible in the form of plankton and algae. It can also occur in unproductive areas, where only larger animals possess the locomotive efficiency for a migration, or in deep waters where the unpredated creatures are simply very old, slow growing, and low energy, capitalizing on scaling factors surrounding energy use to become more survivable as they grow larger, and are feeding on a constant drizzle of dead matter from elsewhere.
So, to continue playing fast and loose with the ecology, here’s what I propose:
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Dewbacks, banthas, and krayt dragons are all very old, and grow very slowly, and are closer to reptiles than not, possibly with a metabolism that crashes during cold nights to save energy. Saying a creature is too big for the food supply really means it is too energetic for the food supply, and maybe Tatooinian muscle has evolved to be supremely efficient, too. Whatever.
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Tatooine is obviously going to be more hospitable closer to the poles, and Uncle Owen mentioned seasons. Ergo, most of the substantial life forms on Tatooine migrate to whichever polar-ish band to follow winter, and food. It should be noted that the two sentient intelligent species are migratory- Sandpeople with their banthas and Jawas with their sandcrawlers (presumably a modern adoption, like Inuit and snowmobiles.)
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Primary producers and primary consumers make their livelihood by being hard to find- perhaps plants that only unfurl their leaves from burrows past the noonday heat, and retract them in response to vibrations. Or deep tubers that throw up a fast growing, expendable seasonal “grass.” Sand plankton sounds good, except that sand interferes with the whole reason that plankton can be so productive- that all the cells in the volume still have access to light and nutrient. Sand- not as much. It’d just be a lichen analogue.
Lastly, it’s debatable that we ever see any Tattooine megafauna that couldn’t have a nutritional relationship with sentient beings, and for those which are established as native, it’s conceivable that it has still been bred much larger. It’s possible that native dewbacks and banthas live within the Tatooine Antarctic Circle and are the size of alpacas, the dwarf form of a creature that grew much larger when the planet still had oceans, and that can still be bred to elephant size without too much physiological trouble. The only time I recall seeing dewbacks, banthas, or eopies that aren’t being utilized as mounts is one herd of banthas in ROTJ, and I know I’ve run into plenty of cows in deserts without ever seeing the watering hole or the rancher.
The sarlaac is both sessile and well fed, so it’s no harder to explain than a palm tree in Vegas. As for that krayt dragon skeleton- aren’t we always finding giant fossil versions of modern creatures in deserts?
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I really appreciate somebody finally grading the possibilities of Hollywood creatures ‘somehow’ living in an ecosystem that looks light on support for said creatures. You all seem to have this pretty well sorted out. I have a related question?
What do all those apes live on in Muir woods in the current Planet of the Apes franchise? Grubs? Once upon a time I’m sure there were larger mammals but hardly in the numbers we see in the movies.
And my apologies for taking this discussion down a side alley. If anybody would like to tackle this in a seperate post, I’m good with that.
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You carbon-centric life forms always think your six proton scheme is sooo special. Perhaps Tatooine’s biology is silicon based and the banthas are feasting on the sand itself.
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Actually according to Expanded Universe sources, Hoth has limited flora around the equator, that’s what the bluish streaks around the middle of the planet are.
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Perhaps they eat all the spaghetti?
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Don’t knock grubs - they’re full of protein! Really good for ya!
Now about some other readily available food in the area: Madrone trees have edible berries. If they can hand fish, they could have salmon and other fish. Blackberries and strawberries grow wild in the area. They’d probably steal eggs from birds (and kill nestlings). Redwood sorrel is another edible plant in the area (only mildly toxic - to the point where you can eat it in small quantities).
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