There’s dirt. Where does it go when they burrow? Or do they push future dirt behind them back into the tunnel they are creating so they’re essentially in a small bubble?
This is a question I’ve wondered for a while but it’s definitely being prompted now because of the Dune 2 preview and Tremors on right now. Obviously those are movies. Are they based on any reality? They’re clearly scaled beyond reality but can animals move through earth fast? Not faster than people running (or maybe they can?!?!) but certainly faster than I can dig with a shovel??
In: Planetary Science
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Scale is an enormous part of it, as well as the composition of the medium. A clam can dig down into wet sand pretty fast but a worm doesn’t go through dirt in your back yard very fast and they have very different burrowing methods. A worm actually consumes and excretes the dirt it travels through while something like a mole actually digs, compresses the dirt and leaves little tunnels. Scale again plays into it and a giant mole’s tunnels would collapse but a tiny one’s doesn’t. Something like the sandworms in Tremors or Beetlejuice or Dune are pretty unfeasible but if they could function in any sort of medium they’d have the best chance in loose sand.
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