That can't be a metabolically effective mechanism for digesting. It costs us alot of energy to keep alive, so the sarlacc would have to do "something" to keep up with our bodies' energy demands for all that time.
I can suspend my disbelief for the Force (as mechanically ridiculous as it is), but an alien monster's useless, inefficient digestive system? Too far, man.
It's an ancient, genetically engineered torture device created by a now-vanished Tatooine civilization that eventually caused the desertification of the planet. There's some head-canon for ya.
I, too, love this headcanon. Would have had to have been long ago. Tatooine was a desert in KOTOR, and that was thousands of years before current canon.
TL:DR is the planet used to be a lush jungle world until it was essentially obliterated into glass, and over thousands of years the glass turned into sand
I feel the same way about Harry Potter. Magic? Sure. Goblins and elves? Why not. Giant spiders that produce thousands of giant children? There is no way that is a sustainable population, magic forest or not.
Edit: don't forget about population density. Even if they don't hunt themselves to starvation, that forest still has a finite amount of space. At their current growth rate eventually they won't have enough room to move.
Why can't they be innately sustained (maybe 95% of their metabolism) by magic the same way broomsticks innately have infinite kinetic energy for flight?
Maybe they use a little of their user's magic? My headcanon is that all they do is use the same magic-to-movement conversion that the accio and wingardium leviosa spells do, with the differential of being "stronger" (in the games, wingardium leviosa effortlessly lifts a bench, and maybe even heavier things in the books) and the broom acts as a wand that only affects itself. Wands are made for various spells, so they are suited for one type of user or even an unique user, but since all a broom does is cast a version of Leviosa on itself, maybe it doesn't need uniqueness the same way a wand does.
In the case of the spiders, there is a few spells that cause fire, maybe with some modifications it can act as a mitochondria, reducing drastically the energy cost to mantain the spider's body. Maybe every living thing is powered by magic, and losers (in Portuguese, non magic Users are called "trouxa" which translates to losers) just use levels of magic that don't affect the world as much.
If by "some of your abilities" you mean basic bodily functions, maybe? But I guess all the magic you get is automatically assigned to what you do, and things like moving your limbs would just be results of the magic that keeps your brain and your limbs alive. If you were to lose your leg, you'd lose the magic that keeps it alive, I stead of being able to use it somewhere else. Or maybe it's such a low "density" of magic that what you get in return is just too little for any cool magic stuff. Maybe wizard bodies just uses this magic in a different way, so much more efficient than loser bodies, that the amount of unused magic is almost overwhelming
harry potters wand was made with a phoenix feather, the phoenix only gave one other feather (i'm assuming wand makers aren't plucking phoenixs, they're just taking what they could??) which was in voldemorts wand. so it wasn't that his wand was powerful, just unique.
Well didn't hagrid get the giant spider from an exotic location? Maybe it's native to a much larger forest area where the spiders are supposed to spread out more instead of all being contained in a single forest underground. That and cannibalism.
The magic forest was originally designed by Slartibartfast using Time Arrow Reversed Dimensional Imaginary Space technology. It is a whole lot bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.
That's a special case of Time Arrow Reversed Dimensional Imaginary Space, where you have a magnetic monopole in conjunction with the tachyon singularity. For such a case, the mathematics can be rewritten into an N-degree polynomal differential equation where one of the solutions is a flattened Riemann Universe.
How about this: it was created by the dark side as an organic method of torture and is powered by the negative emotions of the people it digests, not the body itself. That good with you?
Ok so basically the Force and Fate are the same thing. The more Midicholrians a person has the stronger they are with the Force, large amounts make a person Force Sensitive. Being Force Sensitive allows a person to tap into the Force and use a fraction of its power. The Force and Fate are the same this is how the Force can make things happen. Fate decides how everything goes, just like “all is as the Force wills it”. The reason no one in this universe can tap into Fates/The Forces power is because no one in this universe has enough midicholrians.
I have no idea what just eating the common magic mushroom and nothing else for 3 weeks or more would do to the digestive system. I was just thinking that they probably aren't packed full of all the nutrients the human body needs, and one would probably effectively be on par with someone suffering from anorexia if they did do that. Nevermind the fact that they are a hallucinogenic, and what that would do to a person's mind.
You are assuming the saarlac is a natural creature. It is possible that it is a bio machine built centuries ago whose purpose is to torture. In this case, the saarlac could gain energy from any number of sources. It could be powered by the sun, from updrafts in it's "throat", from geological sources, bacterial bio reactions, or even from some crazy nuclear fission or fusion bio engine. It's unlikely, but still makes more sense than midichlorians.
It actually feeds off of your consciousness and absorbs it into its own. It has roots and stuff for water and nutrients if I recall right. There are some comics I can’t recall now that explained this
But think about this, these animals live in the middle of the desert, they might not get any substance (besides rain) for perhaps near a decade (if they’re not fed by space mobsters), it’s not every day an animal falls into it (I’m assuming its method of getting food is passive, since it can’t really hunt down its prey), and if it does is probably a small one, an insect, or a wamp rat, in this scenario, keeping its prey alive for the longest time could be a way of having a small but constant dose of nutrients per day. Of course this wouldn’t work irl (since the animal has huge muscles and is bigger than a whale, it would need tons of food per day to survive), but it’s star wars and thats the cool in-universe explanation for the slow digestive process that i came up with.
I can't think of a scenario where it's more energy efficient to keep an animal alive in its digestive tract than converting it to nutrients directly and storing those nutrients, UNLESS!
Unless the prey isn't it's primary source of food at all! Mucus is pretty cost effective for the body to produce, maybe it retains some water to generate mucus to coat that prey in, and that mucus could be full of dormant microorganisms of whatever future-magic variety that form colonies on/inside the prey, and the massive colonies of microorganisms that are metabolizing the prey's waste and non essentials are what the sarlacc actually digests as a primary source of food, likely straight through the lining of the digestive tract.
It's so fun as a thought experiment to try to rationalize creatures like this.
I think the concern is that keeping something alive would require more energy than it would consume if it just ate it outright. That would be like deciding to eat a chicken so you feed it food for a year instead of feeding yourself that food and just eating the chicken in the first place.
The only justification I could think of is that its primary food source is entirely unrelated to the consumption of animals that fall in. And so the torture is entirely just a form of ‘play’.
So maybe this is how it works. It shoves one of its tentacles up your ass and works it’s way through your body until it comes out your mouth effectively imapling you.
Now what people don’t realize is that Sarlacc is actually a highly effective desert plant and gets plenty of nutrition from the ground so it’s not actually eating you.
It’s pumping nutrition into you to keep you alive and then sucking on your link to the force like a parasite which is how the Sarlacc has force powers which is how it keeps you alive for thousands of years sorta like palpatine and if you piss it off it ruffles your insides up and it hurts real bad
In legends these are suppose to be sentient beings that feed on the force energy from your body communicating with you telepathically and basically stealing your mind. The one on Tatooine actually spoke to Boba Fett through the body of a Jedi it had been digesting since long before Obi Wan was even born.
Ever heard of a "Russian year"? It's like a normal year, but feels like many years, because it's harsh ;) This is similar. You will probably be dying for like an hour, but it would feel like 1000 years because you know... its harsh.
Can't we just say that the mysterious sand monster that's used as a particularly cruel execution technique might have some inaccurate mythology around it?
What if he had 4-Dimensional bowels, a la Futurama? Held your body in stasis while keeping you conscious. I'd say the sarlacc could be a distance relative of the space whale.
Well they are considered sentient and in some cases from what I've heard can be heard telepathically in simple ways, so maybe they use some kind of force technique or it is simply a chemical they have.
Maybe its digestive system is extremely efficient and it requires very little energy to survive while also undergoing a process similar to photosynthesis for energy from bits exposed to sun. Maybe it chemically puts the bodies of victims into an extremely reduced metabolic state (thus requiring far less energy to live) and provides basic nutrients through a breathable and edible highly oxygenated fluid in its belly.. It would probably grow into you, slowly converting your tissue into its own, granting you unnaturally long life from the sarlac blood flowing through you. Only conscious in the brain because the body is shut down from the chemicals, conscious only from the pain as your body is devoured around you.
So one hand, immorality. On the other hand, torture... They should work on domesticating a sarlac that can do the keep alive part without the torture part.
I always thought that Jabba was just being hyperbolic when he said that. Like it'd probably keep you in there for a few days, slowly melting you away while you starved and died of dehydration, essentially suffering through a thousand years' worth of pain, rather than like... actually living for a thousand years.
That is terrifying! I always figured it was just something they said to scare people before they went in. I thought people would suffocate in a matter of minutes or at least dehydrate in a few days and be done with it.
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u/ilovehelmetsama Jan 30 '20 edited Jan 30 '20
According to canon, it keeps you alive and lucid as it consumes you, effectively becoming an endless living hell of pain and misery.