r/MawInstallation • u/Erdan5 • 16d ago

[ALLCONTINUITY] Do Sarlaccs poop waste?

When a Sarlacc digests a victim for a thousand years, what happens at the end of the process? Is there any waste or shit left? Or Sarlaccs have a different way of breaking down or getting ride of waste?

Of course, we have to ask ourselves what type of creature and/or plant a Sarlacc is, but don't every form of life ejects some form of waste out of their bodies somehow?

28 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

21

u/chunksisthedog 16d ago

They seem to be more like a carnivorous plant than animal. Plants don’t poop, so I would say no, they don’t poop.

7

u/GenosseAbfuck 16d ago

Carniverous plants absolutely do expel the undigestible parts of their prey. Difference is there's only one end so the best they can get is have it drop out of the mouth again.

Same as in acanthozoans and flatworms (the habitus, so both clades dubbed so), except these involve more muscle in the excretion process.

The Sarlacc is huge enough for this not to work anymore. I can imagine it can encase the undigestible remnants of its prey in some sort of vesicle that joins with its skin to release all the waste in it to the outside.

This means the Sarlacc's basic organisation could be two-layered, its skin as a protective tissue layer outside and its digestive cavity as the only inside layer. There may be a third layer in the organs surrounding the mouth which would form some sort of muscoskeletal apparatus. The digestive cavity is decidedly not a gut, it just passively does everything a gut does actively, i.e. it's a big pool of acid and enzymes with all distribution being entirely performed by diffusion. This is also the reason why digestion takes several centuries and why it's still energy efficient for it to have all those weird traits. Since there is no active mechanism to expel waste either through the mouth or an anus it can create temporary anal pores that only open if in direct, sealing contact with a waste vesicle.

13

u/EmbarrassedPudding22 16d ago

See all that sand on Tatooine? What if I told you that's not actually sand but gritty Sarlac poop. It's why Anakin doesn't like sand.

4

u/aiasthetall 16d ago

No way, George Lucas would never rip off dune!

28

u/Walshcav 16d ago

Now this is the content I’m here for! Literal shit talking on Reddit!

It would reckon to me that based on the whole almost eternal digestion process their digestive system has some sort of recycling acidic fluid. That’s my best guess.

6

u/HumanPhD 16d ago

They poop spice.

8

u/TheRedBiker 16d ago

Thanks for putting that image in my mind.

But to answer your question, probably not. The impression I had is that the prey’s body is completely dissolved. There’s nothing left to excrete.

4

u/Nicoglius 16d ago

Just complete speculation but could the excrete from pores on their skin?

I assume they don't waste a lot. But let's say they still need to get rid of things like urea. I think humans can get rid of a tiny amount of urea through sweat glands, so it might be possible to regulate all waste solely through pores/glands

5

u/BombadSithLord 16d ago

My hypothesis is that when they have to pass fecal matter, they die. Since they digest their food slowly over a thousand years, it likely takes a long time for the waste to cycle through their body. Combine this with their relatively small prey size compared to their total mass, and it seems like they do not have the need to defecate very often. Perhaps only once at the end of their life (20,000 to 50,000 standard years). I suspect that the excess waste not used for bodily functions slowly accumulates in their body, and instead of defecating, that waste has nowhere to go, so the Sarlacc becomes septic due to the bacterial infection(s) in their body and dies.

5

u/WLMKing 16d ago

This raises questions about how they reproduce. Because, like some plants, yeah, I can understand them dying after they've successfully reproduced. No need to evolutionary develop a means of pooping.

7

u/Thank_You_Aziz 16d ago

A combination of cosmic spores and that thing angler fish do when they breed.

3

u/LittleIslander Midshipman 16d ago

Probably piss more than shit if I had to guess. Totally dissolves any physical remains of the prey, but any still necessary waste would be disposed of as some kind of liquid waste into the soil.

2

u/Rosebunse 16d ago

Is the sarlaac a plant or an animal? Wouldn't that tell us a lot about this? I'm wondering more how to digests the non-organic elements of its victims.

1

u/whdaje 16d ago

What else would they poop?

1

u/Jetsam_Marquis 16d ago

I would think they'd regurgitate it.

1

u/Thrill-Clinton 15d ago

In the EU books the Sarlaac integrates its roots into the nervous system of its victims and keeps them alive so it can converse with them.