The Great Orm of Mars

Fig. 1: An alleged photo of a sandworm briefly surfacing, captured by the Curiosity rover. In reality it is a rock formation of crystals whose surrounding matrix has eroded away.

 

The majority of life on Mars is tiny to microscopic in size. The number of lifeforms than can grow taller than a human can be counted on one hand. Any megafauna has been extinct for millennia, if not for millions or even billions of years. Or has it?

Rumours abound of the great dustbowl desert of the northern hemisphere being home to a gigantic creature that swims through the sands like a whale through water. These rumours of “sandworms” are largely based on grainy satellite imagery, geological structures claimed to be “worm-signs”, including the infamous canals, and some eyewitness-reports made by space tourists. At least one Mongolian cosmonaut claims to have seen one as well, likening it to the “olgoi-khorkoi” of his homeland. Professional spacefarers of western countries have meanwhile never made such claims (though even if they did see one, they might not report it out of fear of being seen as unprofessional, as often happens with UFOs). Nobody has ever been able to produce any physical evidence or even clear photographs of the creature.

There are various reasons that speak against the creature’s biological reality. For one, it seems physically impossible for an organism to move through sand as if it were water, especially at the claimed great speeds. Sand simply does not work that way and even if it did, the friction would create an unimaginable amount of abrasion and heat that would likely damage most organisms. At least one cryptoxenologist, Roy Sanderson, has countered this by claiming that the worm might be able to create vibrations in the ground that turn sand into a non-newtonian fluid that makes it easier to swim through. If this really were the case though, seismometers at various Martian research stations would have surely picked up evidence of such vibrations.

Even ignoring that, there is the question of how an organism this big would even be able to subsist in a biome with so little plant and animal life. Some cryptoxenologists have argued that in the deep underground of Mars there might be hidden lush ecosystems that the worms might be feeding on, like sperm-whales diving into the abyss to catch squids before surfacing. There is no evidence for these hidden ecosystems, so this is just special pleading. A more sensible suggestion that has been made is that the sandworms might be lithotrophs, literally feeding on the iron dust they plough though, because we actually know these types of organisms exist on Mars. This has led to some fanciful speculations that the worms might be giant offshoots of the otherwise small dust slugs. The problem is that the iron-reducing lithotrophy of the dust slugs is an inefficient energy-source that seems very unlikely to be capable of supporting any larger animal. Though we do not know how this system changes if an organism with a larger gut is able to ingest far greater amounts at a faster rate. Similarly to hindgut-fermentation in sauropod dinosaurs, larger body sizes might actually make digestion far more efficient than in smaller animals. But this is just speculation with no direct evidence.

Lastly, even if it is on another planet, it seems highly unlikely that an organism this large would go undetected for so long. Even if they lived 99% of their lives underground, the movements these creatures would create would, as mentioned, surely be detectable by seismometers.

Fig. 2: Satellite imagery claimed by Holland to show a giant worm or wormsign.

But if these sandworms are mere myths, then why do people keep claiming to have seen them? Perhaps the very first claims of giant sandworms on Mars, certainly the first ones to be widely published, were made by one William T. Holland in December 1978, based on grainy satellite imagery he claimed to show the worms and traces left behind by them. The images in reality just showed dune-filled canyons, which appeared convex instead of concave due to lighting. However, the date of Holland’s claims is highly intriguing, as they were made just a few months after the release of part 1 of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune quadrilogy. Just like the novel they were based on, the movies prominently displayed the fictional giant sandworms of Arrakis, brought to life thanks to H.R. Giger’s amazing designs and Phil Tippet’s ground-breaking go-motion technology. It seems very likely that Holland’s interpretation of the images were coloured by the movies and their popularity among general audiences further boosted the perceived plausibility of the cryptid. Many of the space-tourists who claimed that the unusual sand dunes they saw crawl across the desert were the legendary worms admitted to having read Holland’s books on the matter, so their interpretation was thus indirectly also coloured by Jodorowsky’s Dune. Therefore, they all saw giant sandworms on Mars because they wanted to see them.

Fybra

 
The deserts of Mars are treacherous, not just because of the sharp and craggy rocks and the constant risk of massive duststorms. Under some rocks can lie predators who do not like being awoken from their hibernation.

One of these is the fybra, a serpentine organism that can grow up to 60 cm long. It is a fyrm, a group of derived diplognath circulates. Like the hekubus, it is a soft-boded organism internally supported by a hydroskeleton, not unlike a rainworm. Its only hard-part is the skull and the two dorsal mandibles, made of calcite. Unlike the hekubus, fyrms have teeth and are covered head-to-tail in a dense pelt of setae-derived hairs. They evolved this insulation because they are actually endothermic organisms and therefore try to maintain a stable body-temperature.

Requiring more energy than cold-blooded animals of similar size, the fybra is relatively rare compared to onychognath predators such as the tynus or even the much larger cecrops. But its metabolism gives it one deciding advantage: It can hunt during the cold desert nights when others cannot.

Most of its prey consists of spirifers, pseudarticulates and small onychognaths. How exactly it tracks them is still a mystery. It probably does not see in infrared like some snakes can, as most of its prey is not warm-blooded. Its sense of smell is likely also not well-developed, having no nose beyond perhaps two breathing orifices at the base of the skull. Most likely then it tracks its prey through sound, using its large and solid lower jaw to pick up vibrations in the ground. Perhaps it is even sensitive enough to pick up the heartbeats of certain creatures while they sleep, as the fybra is often observed preying on them lying dormant in their burrows. As the fybra cannot dislocate its jaw like a snake, it uses its double mandibles to cut up its prey into nice bitesize pieces to swallow.

During the long dust storm months of winter, the fybra itself hides underground in burrows in order to hibernate. While it can dig by itself, it prefers to seek out burrows that have already been dug out by other creatures, such as shetaws, a kind of tortoise-like archaeocephalian.

How fybras reproduce has not been observed so far. Probably, like other fyrms, they lay eggs.

Nerak Thunderbolts

Nerak thunderbolts (Moranis dominans) – named “Neraks Donnerkeile” in the original German – are peculiar invertebrate Martians first encountered by ESA missions in the Kasei valleys. Their name is in reference to their superficial resemblance to belemnite guards, which in medieval folklore were believed to have been petrified lightning strikes. They also go by the name of “helmetworms”.  

Originally believed to be characteristic of the sloped and canyoned terrains of Tharsis, multiple species of neraks have since been found all across the northern hemisphere of Mars, sticking out of most mesas, buttes and rock outcrops. They are arezoans which consist of two calcium carbonate shells that, together, resemble a rifle bullet or artillery shell. Inside the shell is a tentacled organism with a water skeleton. To open the top, the organism hydraulically stiffens a rod in the body’s centre, which makes the mantle grow not unlike a human erection. To close the shell slowly, it simply deflates, though it can also be closed through muscular action if it needs to be done quickly. The skin of the mantle is scaly like in a snake. The nervous system is simple and brainless, sense organs largely consist of chemoreceptors and statocysts that measure air-pressure changes.

Even more so than the dust slugs, neraks are characterized as mineral-eaters, directly feeding off the rocks they grow on. Usually hidden from view, the bottom of the main shell has an opening for an extendable leech-like “mouth”, which gnaws and licks at the rock, dissolving it with acids and scraping actions from a radula. Inside their guts live various areonts which generate energy through lithotrophy, breaking apart the consumed minerals. Different nerak species can have different types of endosymbiont, allowing them to digest different kinds of rocks. Some oxidize iron, others nitrogen compounds and again others might both oxidize or reduce sulphuric rocks. Being sessile animals with very low energy needs, these rather inefficient reactions are enough for the neraks to make a living. Neraks have a tremendous role in shaping Mars, their eroding actions creating crumbling cliffs and treacherous crevasses. In some areas, they have turned entire hills into Swiss cheese. This aggressive erosion is surely another major source of the constant dust which dominates the planet. Ecologically they are also of importance, being a water source for shell-cracking predators.

Neraks gain water by opening up in the morning hours to fold out their filamentous tentacles into the air, thereby catching any morning dew. For the rest of the day, they usually remain closed, likely for protection. Interestingly, the base of each tentacle has an orifice which directly connects to the gut. While these holes are likely for the purpose of drinking and waste disposal, it has also been suggested that neraks, much like the aforementioned dust slugs, could be using their arms to filter aeroplankton and/or feed on the constant dust in the air. The observation that neraks remain closed during dust storms would speak against the latter, however.

Using the muscular radula with which they scrape at the rock, neraks also drag themselves forward into the holes they create. Once a nerak has dug in so deep that it cannot extend its tentacles anymore to catch dew, it pushes itself out of its hole and tries to find a new surface to dig into. These moves can sometimes be fatal, the nerak failing to hold on to the rock wall, falling down a steep cliff and shattering at the bottom. Sometimes other aliens and even astronauts can fall victim to "nerak-falls".

Despite being commonly encountered, there are two major questions regarding nerak biology that remain unanswered, which are how they reproduce and how they are related to the rest of Martian life. To this day, no juvenile neraks have ever been encountered, nor any adults in the state of mating, spawning or broadcasting. It is possible that, similar to animals like cicadas, neraks only reproduce in very long, punctuated cycles and we have simply not been on this planet long enough to witness such an event. Alternatively, neraks might be simply mating and spawning deep inside Mars, hidden from our view. Or, similarly to the skolex, one of the numerous worm-like aliens that slither about the planet might actually be the nerak larva, simply having gone unrecognized as such.

After the break-up of the waste-basket-taxon Brachiostoma, helmetworms (scientific name: Rostrozoa) cannot be confidently placed anymore in any of the recognized phyla of Arezoa. The possession of a shell has traditionally placed them somewhere close to the proposed superphylum that contains Spiriferia, Antitremata and Conchocaudata (Egerkrans 2169), but this might of course be only a superficial similarity. The fact that neraks possess more than two gut openings has always been intriguing for those who have studied the Multistomia, a phylum of multi-mouthed arezoans which have gone extinct in the Lyotian or Argyrian period. But the first definitive nerak shells only start appearing in the Late Athabascan, leading to a large gap in the Martian fossil record between them and the last definitive multistomians. More radical is the proposal by Krätschmer 2161, which is that neraks are not arezoans at all, but are instead a distinct offshoot of the aquatic conulareans, a type of shell-building fractarian. The presence of multiple gut-openings as well as a hydroskeleton would speak in favour of this. However, neraks do not seem to possess an internal glide-symmetry.

References:

• Egerkrans, Jakob: Morphological and molecular evidence support the Martian superphylum Areoconchia, in: Astronomical Zoology, 231, 2169, p. 57 – 70.
• Krätschmer, Simon: A fractarian origin for Rostrozoa, in: Strate Station Geological Journal, 511, 2161, p. 90 – 121.

Under the Microscope

As on any planet, the majority of life on Mars is microscopic. Some of these organisms, such as the flechtoids, can form colonies large enough to be clearly observable without help. But most life is invisible to the naked human eye. Taking just a single droplet of Martian groundwater and looking at it through a microscope may therefore yield surprising results.

Most numerous in this unseen world are of course the areonts, the prokaryotic cells of Mars, who manifest themselves to our view as tiny specs slushing between the larger microorganisms. Some form small colonies, banding themselves into hair-like strings. To the north and south of our micromap we may see unusually large areont cells, one swarm propelling itself with single flagellae. The world of the areonts is itself interdependent with that of the Nanobacilli and the Areovira, who are so small that we cannot see them even at this scale.

Most conspicuous are the “elite” of the areonts, who form a kingdom of their own, the Macroareonta. These multicellular prokaryotes shield and compose themselves in all manners of siliceous shells. A quite large shell enters in from the north-west, the whole organism remaining obscure. East of it we see a smaller cousin in the form of a curved tube, from whose ends protrude a number of tendrils. Like their macroscopic cousins, these are likely autotrophic forms, though perhaps feeding on the waste and chemicals left behind by other organisms, for they live in lightless depths.

Quite different from these forms is the fellow which dominates the south-west, this hydraic pentagon. Using the tendrils which slither from beneath its shell, it drags itself forward and even entangles and strangles smaller organisms, the arms slowly devouring them with acids. This macroareont is what is called a “zoomorph”, in simplistic terms an “animal composed of bacterial cells”. It is not as organized as that may sound. Although moving as a single organism and encased in a single shell, prolonged observation has shown that the five compartments house separate cell-families that feed and nourish themselves independently of each other, making it more of a strung-together mass of rafts rather than a disciplined battleship.

This is in contrast to its relative we see in the south-east, encased in its mushroom-shaped shell. The cells-compartments of this “zoomorph” indeed appear to act in unison, with parts much more specialized for shell-building, feeding and reproduction and unable to exist without the others. Sagittabacillus, as it is called, has on occasion been described as a bacterial jellyfish.

Fierce competitors of these baroque organisms are the rhodokaryotes, chiefly the proteroareozoans. Their internal compartmentalization into distinctive cammaculae allows them more complexity and size even in a single-celled state. We see various of them floating around. In the very south is a malignant parasite that brings to mind a naval mine, seeking to attach itself to a larger areozoan or perhaps to be ingested. To its right is a three-flagelled “bottleship”, on collision course with its prokaryote counterpart. In the north-west, between the macroareonts, we catch a cell in the process of mitosis.

The contrast between the proteroareozoans and the macroareonts represents two different “philosophies” towards the attainment of complexity. One seeks it through external compartmentalization, the process of multiple simple individuals banding together to form one complex construct. The other seeks it through internal compartmentalization, dividing oneself into smaller sections to form one complex individual. This contrast forms, I believe, a universal pattern in nature. We see it repeated again at a larger scale when we compare the Polyfractaria with their relatives, the Pseudarticulata. On Earth too, when we contrast the great colonies of the ants and termites with the hulking bodies of the ungulates and pachyderms that both roam the remaining savannahs.

The highest complexity is however attained by those that can combine both internal and external compartmentalization. For evidence of this, look no further than Man himself, who in him carries the most complex organ the universe knows, which in turn allows him to form, beyond his own body, the most complex construct the universe knows: A society which puts to shame any organisation ever attained by the simple-minded colonial insects and produces intellectual and cultural achievements beyond those of even the smartest solitary animal. The terrifying side-effect, or perhaps result, of this compartmentalization is that Man’s potential for destruction is ironically only outdone by the most mindless and simplest of things, the nuclear forces which govern the very fabric of the universe and make even the mighty stars burst.

What we observe at the planetary scale of Man’s expanding civilization, we see, of course, repeated again at the microscopic one. Arezoans, the “animal” life of Mars, clearly outgun the destructive potential of both their single-celled forebearers and their macroareont prey. Three of them we see enter the picture in the north-east. On the very edge we see some sort of ciliated “brachiostoman” with a tail-fluke, using its tendrils to capture itself a unicell. To which new phylum of this broken up waste-basket-taxon it might belong is unknown. In some ways it resembles a miniature mollizoan without the distinctive jet-mantles. The fellow in the centre of the image, who is about to feed on some areont strings, defies classification even further. With its tendrils, mantle, cilias, vertical jaw and glide symmetry it combines traits from various known phyla and even kingdoms, making it hard to categorize for now. Perhaps this is a new phylum that has yet to be recognized.

More firm is the identity of the multi-legged organism, Noxochaetus, just entering into the lens’ frame. Its four-part jaws, four antennae and segmented body all indicate that this creature is a highly derived onychognath, likely a member of the insectoid Dodecapoda, who have reduced their six legs to such a degree that their expanded fingers now serve as twelve new limbs. Combined with the complete lack of eyes and extreme reduction in internal complexity (completely lacking lungs) to reach such a miniscule size, it is admittedly hard to see that this organism has more in common with an ushabti than any of the other worm-like organisms that inhabit the Martian soil. Noxochaetus represents the utmost degree of derivation, which ironically makes its playing field again that of the most archaic of Mars’ organisms.