Sandtrout
The juvenile form of the sandworm, and the reason Arrakis stays a desert.
Sandtrout are the sandworm's larval stage, soft and vulnerable in a way the adult never is. One habit defines them: they take in every trace of free water they touch and seal it away in reservoirs deep beneath the sand. Water is poison to a maturing worm, so the behavior is self-preservation rather than malice, but the effect on Arrakis is absolute. Nothing reaches the surface for ordinary plant life to live on, and the desert stays a desert. Pardot and Liet Kynes understood that greening the planet meant breaking this cycle first. The Fremen had found their own use for the creature long before any planetologist arrived: drowning one yields the bitter liquid their Reverend Mothers take as the Water of Life.
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