A good few months ago we looked at the working animals of Dune - this time, I thought we could check in on all the animals that you wouldn’t find in your local zoo.
(So we’ll be skipping any generic mention of hares and eagles and owls, etc.)
Notice I didn’t say alien animals, because (at least in the core canon) only one of them actually is: the sandworm.
All the others are either bred, mutated or genetically engineered versions of our Earth fauna: horses, slugs, pigs, etc.
SPOILER WARNING
Includes content from the Core Canon, Dune Encyclopedia, and Expanded Universe.
Sligs
Slugs + Pigs = Sligs
Illustration from the Dune Imperium board game
Yes, you heard that right. One of the Tleilaxu masters had the bright idea to cross giant slugs with pigs to make… sligs. Now if that sounds disgusting, hold on to your black aba robes, because it gets better.
They’re a two for one deal: while alive, they chomp through all your garbage and waste, and once butchered, they provide the period best period meat period, in the known universe. Period.
Those slowly creeping crosses between giant slugs and pigs might provide meat for some of the most expensive meals in their universe but the creatures themselves embodied everything the Sisterhood held repugnant about the Tleilaxu. Sligs had been one of the earliest Bene Tleilax barter items, a product grown in their tanks and formed with the helical core from which all life took its shapes. That the Bene Tleilax made them added to the aura of obscenity around a creature whose multimouths ground incessantly on almost any garbage, passing that garbage swiftly into excrement that not only smelled of the sty but was slimy.
"The sweetest meat this side of heaven," Bellonda had quoted from a CHOAM promotion.
Chairdogs
Let me move you away from disgust to the cutest furniture you've ever had to feed.
Chairdogs are super comfortable but require sustenance and expensive staff to maintain, making them luxury items that scream wealth. They come in various colors - blue specimens are particularly rare - and they have eyes and emotions. In Heretics of Dune, one "squeaks with indignation" when disturbed.
And while we never get to see any of their cousins, chairs are not the only form they take.
Teg's dislike of chairdogs and other living furniture was well known.
Other living furniture? Even chairs are weird, if you ask me. But I ask you: what furniture would be better if it were living?
One thing to note for the record: while you and I might think of them as a Dune thing, chairdogs first popped up in another Frank Herbert universe, one and a half decades earlier. Specifically, in a book called Whipping Star, a novel from 1970 that I can only recommend.
Sandworms
Undoubtedly the star of the show: Shai Hulud.
This colossal annelid (thanks thesaurus.com) can reach 400+ meters in length with a mouth spanning 80 meters. That's not just big → that's "swallow a frigate whole" big.
Its lifecycle and relationship to sandtrout and sand plankton deserve a whole separate piece, so for now I’ll leave you with a reminder that Arrakis was once a lush paradise.
[Leto] fell silent and [Ghanima] wondered why he kept referring to the haploid phase of the planet's giant sandworm, but she dared not prod him.
"The sandtrout," he repeated, "was introduced here from some other place. This was a wet planet then. They proliferated beyond the capability of existing ecosystems to deal with them. Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made this a desert planet . . . and they did it to survive. In a planet sufficiently dry, they could move to their sandworm phase."
This also proves their utterly alien origin.
Schlags
The only other potentially alien piece of fauna in the core canon is a schlag.
SCHLAG: animal native to Tupile once hunted almost to extinction for its thin, tough hide.
But we won’t ever know what kind of animal it is because in the story’s text it’s just a throwaway reference, used exactly once.
Jessica crossed to the deep, old-fashioned armchair with an embroidered cover of schlag skin, moved the chair into position to command the door.
Let me know what you think a schlag is. I really want to know.
🔒 In the full article:
Earth animals 2.0: Laza Tigers, D-Wolves, Thorses
The scientific rigor of the Encyclopedia: Rya Wolves, Clappets, Ganja, etc.
The alien beastiary of the EU: spicy seaworms, salusan bulls, bjondax fur whales, etc.
… and Tribbles?
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