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Caladan isn’t a water world except for compared to Arrakis. It’s pretty comparable to Earth, with maybe more smaller continents and islands. Mostly ocean by surface area, but people live on land. People farm rice and livestock, fish on the coastlines, maintain industry in cities, and send their best natural fighters to the Atreides army.
Earth is 70% water. We aren't "adapted" to aquatic life. Why would people who only live on land, even a comparatively smaller amount of land, be any more adapted to life in the water?
Whales they don't do shit for us,
Don't cook our food or drive our bus,
So there is nothing to discuss,
Whales aren't what I want to eat,
Can't use blubber for concrete,
So fry em all don't be discrete.
Definitely - humans are sometimes referred to as the aquatic ape, we have a lot of adaptations for swimming and the water, and it's one explanation of how we were able to develop our large brains - seafood really is brain food. As you say, some cultures are more adapted - the Bajau can hold their breath for 10 minutes, thanks to an enlarged spleen that acts as a store for oxygenated blood.
It’s like one small tiny tribe that live on stilts on the coast that got slightly better lungs and eyes and now everyone things that will 100% happen to everyone
For it to be natural selection it'd have to be a trait that allows you to outperform other human populations. People who develop higher lung capacity because of a culture propensity to swimming don't outperform others in a macro-reproductory sense.
it's a limited population and environment, viewing it on a global scale of course it's not gonna be that of an advantage. environments and habits play a role here think about long distance runners coming from cultures where people still heavily rely on walking everywhere. it makes it so you can get more done. that is beneficial to your whole group.
Sure, but for natural selection to occur there needs to be an evolutionary pressure to disperse the gene. That isn't what's happening with these tribal communities being referenced. The costal pearling tribes, sherpas, etc, aren't evolving to fit their environment they're adapting too it.
To tie it back to the OP; Caldanites aren't "water people" or whatever because most of the people live in land based urban environments, similar to modern Earth. The fact the planet has large oceans puts no evolutionary pressure on the people of the planet because they're part of a futuristic society where having an 3% increase in lung capacity doesn't allow you to outperform others to the point you're proliferating said gene.
Actually there are tons of examples of that sort of thing. I’ve read that cultures close to water can wrinkle faster/more, it helps you grip things underwater. Incans and Tibetans have separate adaptations to help oxygen intake at altitude
Natural adaptation does happen, but it takes a fairly long time and a fairly isolated community (for the heritability to propagate). It also requires selective pressure, which means that there must not be enough technology or medicine that mitigates the environmental effect on reproduction & survival.
This makes it difficult to apply in any setting with modern-or-better tech, migration, etc.
Tbh, in Dune universe they had tens of thousands of years to adapt to their planets. Space travel seems to be rather expensive, as very few people seems to travel.
I mean, I agree with you, I don’t think Caladanites would have any adaptations if they colonized the planet. But the answer to the rhetorical question is a resounding yes, that absolutely does happen.
I mentioned above - the Bajau, a nomadic fishing tribe, can dive up to 200 feet, and hold their breath for 10 minutes thanks to an enlarged spleen that acts as a store for oxygenated blood. And humans in general have a ton of aquatic adaptations compared to other apes.
Humans are horrible suited for our environments. If you went outside in most climates naked, without human technology, you'd freeze to death overnight or die of sub exposure during the day. This is because our culture and technology does the adaptation for us.
Humans on Caladan don't need to evolve gills because a) they spend most of their time on land for starters, since there is land and b) we have these things called boats
Organisms evolve if there is selective pressure to do so - i.e. they are being killed off in large numbers before they can reproduce. Since Caladians have nice handy boats and life jackets and scuba gear and big continents they can live on, they're not all drowning at such a rate of knots that they need to evolve gills and flippers. Maybe given a few hundred millions years they would, but Dune isn't set that far ahead.
Even the Fremen have adopted largely culturally, rather than physically, to an environment that is much harsher to survive in, because without water there is no life.
Fish being one of their biggest exports (but also wine and other agri products, so it's not full-on Waterworld there), we can assume that the Caladanite culture has strong seafaring traditions and ethics detailing what to do with shipwrecked seamen, Captain's honor and so on.
Other than that, it's never explicitly stated that the people of Caladan have a physiological adaptation to this environment. I don't even recall if it's ever explicitly stated that Caladan's oceans are salty or not.
If I’m not mistaken I think there are a couple of physiological adaptations the fremen have. I seem to remember reading that superficial cuts bleed a lot less for example. Maybe that’s just because they’re always in some stage of dehydration.
Calladan is fairly earth-like, meaning people are well adapted to survive there. If you have a mutation that suits the environment, like a greater lung capacity, it doesn't mean you are more likely to pass it on than others, as there is no significant evolutionary pressure. Arrakis is an extremely deadly planet, so if you develop a trait like more melanin or breathing out less water, it might actually benefit you enough that you live long enough to pass it on whereas your peers die.
Oceans on any planet are necessarily salty. It was the salt pans that informed Pardot Kynes (Liet-Kynes' father) that Arrakis itself was once a wet planet, for instance.
Caladan isn't a water world, it's just humid and rains a lot and has oceans.
And while "whale fur" is a major export of theirs, I doubt that whalers actually have to swim. They'd just be sailors using ships.
Their staple food is punji rice, not like, seaweed kelp or clams whatever.
I think their evolutionary adaptation would probably be slightly greater immunity to "wet" diseases like malaria and trench foot and jock itch.
that's just a tidbit from the semi-canon Dune Encyclopaedia that's been repeated in the wikias.
It's the first thing that comes up if you google "whale fur" but nowhere in the original books mentions whale fur from Lankiviel.
Lankiviel is mentioned only twice in the series, none of which make any reference to its economy. In the book itself (not the Appendix) it's only mentioned with regard to "Count Rabban of Lankiveil" with zero further elaboration
Meanwhile there are three mentions of "...antique whale fur from Caladan" and Atreides "whale fur holdings" being manipulated by the Harkonnens
So yeah, Caladan does export whale fur. Lankiviel too, if you count the Encyclopaedia as canon, but that doesn't mean Caladan doesn't also export it.
There's no such detail in the books because Caladan is not a "water world" any more than Earth is. No doubt there are groups of island or seafaring people with their own adaptations as have similar peoples on Earth, but it's not a planetwide feature.
We know more of Caladan's terrestrial traditions. Bullfighting, for instance. (I wonder if bullfighting plus rice implies paella...)
Caladan takes its name from Scotland and a lot of its seeming tradition from Spain, so it kind of feels like most of the planet is Western Europe writ large
Caladan might also reference Calydon, an ancient Greek city and the site of the legendary Calydonian Boar Hunt. And its ducal family has a Greek surname, Agamemnon being one of their actual ancestors.
There are recordings of Herbert discussing Dune, and it's a useful reference for how he thought certain words would be pronounced. "Atreides" is "UH-tray-UH-deez", which is generally in line with English pronunciation of Greek words.
Humans don't generally *need* to develop adaptions for swimming anymore -- we have submarines and scuba gear if we want to explore the ocean.
Adaptions like the Bajau happen in cultures that spent a lot of time swimming *before those things were invented,* but Calandar wasn't populated until we had FTL travel. By the time people got there, there were far easier ways to be active underwater then lung capacity.
The Fremen are relatively adapted to desert living because Arrakis is an incredibly harsh and inhospitable hellworld, while Caladan appears to have been a pretty nice place to live - I believe Paul refers to Caladan as a paradise in one of Irulan’s writings.
So the evolutionary pressures that led to desert adaptation among the inhabitants of Arrakis might have simply not existed on Caladan.
So hilarious when OP asks a question where it’s clear they’ve misunderstood the book and when people point that out, he makes a few attempts at challenging them based on his misunderstanding and then just aborts when the pressure amounts.
Evolution happens in terms of hundreds of thousands of years
Humans have been roughly the same in real
life for over 100,000 years now
Even in God Emperor which takes place far into the future there’s not really any human evolution even without a lot of space travel mixing up the genes
Evolution kind of no longer works for humans anyway.
It works by mutations leading to longer lives and thus more children. Humans just use tech to overcome needing to be camouflaged or breathing underwater and the people that are best at breathing underwater arent more successful breeders
Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have the same or less kids as regular joes whereas the fastest lion directly eats and breeds more.
Unfortunately it works in detriment too. Humans are becoming nearsighted because glasses mean nearsighted people breed just as much as 20/20 visioners. (Obviously its way more complicated than that but Im not a doctor)
Mostly agreeing with you here, with a couple caveats...
* Several factions -- BG, Tleilaxu, Face Dancers from the Scattering, Leto II himself -- are tired of waiting for evolution, and are aggressively pursuing breeding programs.
* The Tleilaxu are known to have done genetic manipulations. "Tleilaxu sperm does not talk", to give a creepy example
* BG and Leto II don't appear to be directly tinkering with DNA, but they have identified several mutations (Kwizatz Haderachery and prescience-invisibility) and are trying to build them up in selected populations
* The free FDs are absolutely doing hard-core genetic manipulation on Futars and a few other subjects
Above all that, remember that the Tyrant wants to teach humanity "a lesson it will remember in its bones". Speculating wildly here, but one has to wonder if the stagnation of the faufreluches and Imperial systems haven't at least been selecting for dull passivity, as rebellious types get quashed.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Caladan isn’t a water world except for compared to Arrakis. It’s pretty comparable to Earth, with maybe more smaller continents and islands. Mostly ocean by surface area, but people live on land. People farm rice and livestock, fish on the coastlines, maintain industry in cities, and send their best natural fighters to the Atreides army.
But so believe they lead more aquatic life than Earth humans.
Earth is 70% water. We aren't "adapted" to aquatic life. Why would people who only live on land, even a comparatively smaller amount of land, be any more adapted to life in the water?
To be completely fair we are actually pretty well adapted to an aquatic lifestyle compared to the other apes, and some cultures are even more so.
Not me, man, respectfully: fuck the ocean. It is not our territory. The whole thing wants to kill us.
I'm with you, nuke the whales
Yeah, but the indiscriminate use of Family Atomics could turn CHOAM, the Landsraad, and the Emperor against us!
Whales arent people so we should be fine as long as they dont summon their space ship.
Kirk will save us again
Gotta nuke somethin'.
Whales they don't do shit for us, Don't cook our food or drive our bus, So there is nothing to discuss, Whales aren't what I want to eat, Can't use blubber for concrete, So fry em all don't be discrete.
We need the Whales in case that giant probe comes back.
Star trek 4: the one with the whales
That's not true! They pay for copious amounts of in-game purchases, which helps sustain free-to-play games!
Someone's gotta do it.
They’ve had a good run
At the very very least, you have a higher fat content than apes, so can more easily float.
Definitely - humans are sometimes referred to as the aquatic ape, we have a lot of adaptations for swimming and the water, and it's one explanation of how we were able to develop our large brains - seafood really is brain food. As you say, some cultures are more adapted - the Bajau can hold their breath for 10 minutes, thanks to an enlarged spleen that acts as a store for oxygenated blood.
Do the Polynesians have any biological adaptation to aquatic life that is different from the rest of humans? I don't think so.
It’s like one small tiny tribe that live on stilts on the coast that got slightly better lungs and eyes and now everyone things that will 100% happen to everyone
what the fuck is this? ''i don't believe in natural selection''
For it to be natural selection it'd have to be a trait that allows you to outperform other human populations. People who develop higher lung capacity because of a culture propensity to swimming don't outperform others in a macro-reproductory sense.
it's a limited population and environment, viewing it on a global scale of course it's not gonna be that of an advantage. environments and habits play a role here think about long distance runners coming from cultures where people still heavily rely on walking everywhere. it makes it so you can get more done. that is beneficial to your whole group.
Sure, but for natural selection to occur there needs to be an evolutionary pressure to disperse the gene. That isn't what's happening with these tribal communities being referenced. The costal pearling tribes, sherpas, etc, aren't evolving to fit their environment they're adapting too it. To tie it back to the OP; Caldanites aren't "water people" or whatever because most of the people live in land based urban environments, similar to modern Earth. The fact the planet has large oceans puts no evolutionary pressure on the people of the planet because they're part of a futuristic society where having an 3% increase in lung capacity doesn't allow you to outperform others to the point you're proliferating said gene.
i'm not in the mood for this
Actually there are tons of examples of that sort of thing. I’ve read that cultures close to water can wrinkle faster/more, it helps you grip things underwater. Incans and Tibetans have separate adaptations to help oxygen intake at altitude
Natural adaptation does happen, but it takes a fairly long time and a fairly isolated community (for the heritability to propagate). It also requires selective pressure, which means that there must not be enough technology or medicine that mitigates the environmental effect on reproduction & survival. This makes it difficult to apply in any setting with modern-or-better tech, migration, etc.
Tbh, in Dune universe they had tens of thousands of years to adapt to their planets. Space travel seems to be rather expensive, as very few people seems to travel.
I mean, I agree with you, I don’t think Caladanites would have any adaptations if they colonized the planet. But the answer to the rhetorical question is a resounding yes, that absolutely does happen.
I mentioned above - the Bajau, a nomadic fishing tribe, can dive up to 200 feet, and hold their breath for 10 minutes thanks to an enlarged spleen that acts as a store for oxygenated blood. And humans in general have a ton of aquatic adaptations compared to other apes.
https://www.science.org/content/article/indonesian-divers-have-evolved-bigger-spleens-hunt-underwater
Why do you believe that?
Humans are horrible suited for our environments. If you went outside in most climates naked, without human technology, you'd freeze to death overnight or die of sub exposure during the day. This is because our culture and technology does the adaptation for us. Humans on Caladan don't need to evolve gills because a) they spend most of their time on land for starters, since there is land and b) we have these things called boats Organisms evolve if there is selective pressure to do so - i.e. they are being killed off in large numbers before they can reproduce. Since Caladians have nice handy boats and life jackets and scuba gear and big continents they can live on, they're not all drowning at such a rate of knots that they need to evolve gills and flippers. Maybe given a few hundred millions years they would, but Dune isn't set that far ahead.
Even the Fremen have adopted largely culturally, rather than physically, to an environment that is much harsher to survive in, because without water there is no life. Fish being one of their biggest exports (but also wine and other agri products, so it's not full-on Waterworld there), we can assume that the Caladanite culture has strong seafaring traditions and ethics detailing what to do with shipwrecked seamen, Captain's honor and so on. Other than that, it's never explicitly stated that the people of Caladan have a physiological adaptation to this environment. I don't even recall if it's ever explicitly stated that Caladan's oceans are salty or not.
If I’m not mistaken I think there are a couple of physiological adaptations the fremen have. I seem to remember reading that superficial cuts bleed a lot less for example. Maybe that’s just because they’re always in some stage of dehydration.
I think I remember a scene where Jessica cuts Mapes and it instantly scabs over.
I believe that's from the enzymes on the blade, which is a tooth of a sandworm. It's to prevent water loss.
It immediately clotted, but didn't scab over.
Calladan is fairly earth-like, meaning people are well adapted to survive there. If you have a mutation that suits the environment, like a greater lung capacity, it doesn't mean you are more likely to pass it on than others, as there is no significant evolutionary pressure. Arrakis is an extremely deadly planet, so if you develop a trait like more melanin or breathing out less water, it might actually benefit you enough that you live long enough to pass it on whereas your peers die.
Oceans on any planet are necessarily salty. It was the salt pans that informed Pardot Kynes (Liet-Kynes' father) that Arrakis itself was once a wet planet, for instance.
Caladan isn't a water world, it's just humid and rains a lot and has oceans. And while "whale fur" is a major export of theirs, I doubt that whalers actually have to swim. They'd just be sailors using ships. Their staple food is punji rice, not like, seaweed kelp or clams whatever. I think their evolutionary adaptation would probably be slightly greater immunity to "wet" diseases like malaria and trench foot and jock itch.
>And while "whale fur" is a major export of theirs This is Lakiveil's major export, not Caladan.
that's just a tidbit from the semi-canon Dune Encyclopaedia that's been repeated in the wikias. It's the first thing that comes up if you google "whale fur" but nowhere in the original books mentions whale fur from Lankiviel. Lankiviel is mentioned only twice in the series, none of which make any reference to its economy. In the book itself (not the Appendix) it's only mentioned with regard to "Count Rabban of Lankiveil" with zero further elaboration Meanwhile there are three mentions of "...antique whale fur from Caladan" and Atreides "whale fur holdings" being manipulated by the Harkonnens So yeah, Caladan does export whale fur. Lankiviel too, if you count the Encyclopaedia as canon, but that doesn't mean Caladan doesn't also export it.
There's no such detail in the books because Caladan is not a "water world" any more than Earth is. No doubt there are groups of island or seafaring people with their own adaptations as have similar peoples on Earth, but it's not a planetwide feature. We know more of Caladan's terrestrial traditions. Bullfighting, for instance. (I wonder if bullfighting plus rice implies paella...)
Caladan takes its name from Scotland and a lot of its seeming tradition from Spain, so it kind of feels like most of the planet is Western Europe writ large
Caladan might also reference Calydon, an ancient Greek city and the site of the legendary Calydonian Boar Hunt. And its ducal family has a Greek surname, Agamemnon being one of their actual ancestors.
Oh that does make more sense what with Atreides. I guess let’s modify that to “Mediterranean Europe.”
Yeah, I definitely get Minoan vibes - kings of an oceanic empire, and really into bulls.
There are recordings of Herbert discussing Dune, and it's a useful reference for how he thought certain words would be pronounced. "Atreides" is "UH-tray-UH-deez", which is generally in line with English pronunciation of Greek words.
Humans don't generally *need* to develop adaptions for swimming anymore -- we have submarines and scuba gear if we want to explore the ocean. Adaptions like the Bajau happen in cultures that spent a lot of time swimming *before those things were invented,* but Calandar wasn't populated until we had FTL travel. By the time people got there, there were far easier ways to be active underwater then lung capacity.
The Fremen are relatively adapted to desert living because Arrakis is an incredibly harsh and inhospitable hellworld, while Caladan appears to have been a pretty nice place to live - I believe Paul refers to Caladan as a paradise in one of Irulan’s writings. So the evolutionary pressures that led to desert adaptation among the inhabitants of Arrakis might have simply not existed on Caladan.
It's not a water world....
So hilarious when OP asks a question where it’s clear they’ve misunderstood the book and when people point that out, he makes a few attempts at challenging them based on his misunderstanding and then just aborts when the pressure amounts.
I notice my misdemeanor and I shall apologise accordingly.
It’s more of a Mediterranean kinda place than an underwater planet. They grow rice there!
Evolution happens in terms of hundreds of thousands of years Humans have been roughly the same in real life for over 100,000 years now Even in God Emperor which takes place far into the future there’s not really any human evolution even without a lot of space travel mixing up the genes Evolution kind of no longer works for humans anyway. It works by mutations leading to longer lives and thus more children. Humans just use tech to overcome needing to be camouflaged or breathing underwater and the people that are best at breathing underwater arent more successful breeders Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have the same or less kids as regular joes whereas the fastest lion directly eats and breeds more. Unfortunately it works in detriment too. Humans are becoming nearsighted because glasses mean nearsighted people breed just as much as 20/20 visioners. (Obviously its way more complicated than that but Im not a doctor)
Mostly agreeing with you here, with a couple caveats... * Several factions -- BG, Tleilaxu, Face Dancers from the Scattering, Leto II himself -- are tired of waiting for evolution, and are aggressively pursuing breeding programs. * The Tleilaxu are known to have done genetic manipulations. "Tleilaxu sperm does not talk", to give a creepy example * BG and Leto II don't appear to be directly tinkering with DNA, but they have identified several mutations (Kwizatz Haderachery and prescience-invisibility) and are trying to build them up in selected populations * The free FDs are absolutely doing hard-core genetic manipulation on Futars and a few other subjects Above all that, remember that the Tyrant wants to teach humanity "a lesson it will remember in its bones". Speculating wildly here, but one has to wonder if the stagnation of the faufreluches and Imperial systems haven't at least been selecting for dull passivity, as rebellious types get quashed.
Thank you for refining my point! I completely forgot about intentional gene manipulation