00:00In July 1990, four Czech friends decided to go on an adventure to find the Mongol intestine worm,
00:07the creature that may have inspired the monster you saw in the film Dune.
00:12It is said that he lives somewhere at the end of the Gobi desert.
00:15So they took the plane for Mongolia, got in an off-road vehicle and hired local guides to help them.
00:21All this to meet this hypothetical creature that measures nearly 2 meters long,
00:25which spits out an acid capable of melting anything, and which can even project electrical discharges on its enemies.
00:32Legend has it that these lovable beasts spend most of their days hidden under the dunes of sand,
00:38but that they like to go out during the driest months of June and July.
00:43The time was therefore perfectly chosen, but our friends still had to find a way to attract the creature out of its hideout.
00:50Unfortunately for them, no one knew what this giant worm liked to eat.
00:54So they built a special machine that made rhythmic hammering sounds.
00:59They hoped it would get the big worm out of its hole.
01:02They spent two months digging the vast desert, crossing dunes and rocky plains,
01:07in search of the slightest sign of the frightening creature.
01:10Alas, it did not work.
01:12Ivan Makerl, who was the head of the expedition in 1990,
01:17then carried out several expeditions in the Gobi desert.
01:20He tried for the first time to attract the giant worm with explosions.
01:25And the second time, he used a small plane to explore the dunes.
01:29Over the years, American, British and New Zealand groups
01:33organized large expeditions in the region to try to find the creature.
01:37Many other people came from all over the world by their own means,
01:41but no one found anything.
01:44In the West, we heard for the first time about the Mongol worm
01:48thanks to an American paleontologist, Roy Chapman Andrews.
01:52This brave man was probably a model for the character of Indiana Jones.
01:57In 1926, he talks about this creature in his book.
02:02Andrews himself heard about the mysterious creature
02:05at a meeting with Mongol leaders who had never seen it with their own eyes.
02:11One of them said it looked like a sausage about half a meter long,
02:15without a head or legs.
02:17According to him, the worm was so venomous
02:19that the simple fact of touching it could instantly kill you.
02:22And he lived in the most isolated areas of the Gobi desert.
02:25Andrews did not believe that this creature was real,
02:28but he mentioned these testimonies in another book.
02:32In May 2005, four professional British monster hunters decided to try their luck.
02:37They made drawings of the worm
02:39and hired local people to distribute brochures throughout the Gobi desert.
02:44These brochures promised a reward to anyone
02:47likely to provide information on the creature
02:51or to bring them a specimen.
02:53According to them, the noisy machine that the other explorers had used
02:57was more likely to make the beast flee than to attract it.
03:00Someone told them the worm liked humidity.
03:03They would therefore devise a plan to block the streams
03:06in order to create wet areas that attracted the worm.
03:09But it didn't work
03:11because it was too difficult to build dams in the desert.
03:14They ended up using small traps
03:16but found no evidence of the existence of the worm.
03:19But many people told them stories about strange creatures
03:24that they had only seen in the last 70 years.
03:27Over the years, anecdotes about this monster spread throughout the world.
03:31According to some of them, it would only be 30 centimeters long.
03:36According to others, it was as big as a human being.
03:39It was gray-white, or covered with scales, and brown,
03:43or fleshy and bright red.
03:45Some said it looked like a snake, or maybe a caterpillar.
03:49Or that it had wings and could fly.
03:52Others think it could be an evil supernatural being,
03:55devoid of a body.
03:58If these stories are so different from each other
04:01and if all these researches have never given anything,
04:03it may be because the creature simply does not exist.
04:07It would be a cryptid.
04:08These creatures such as the Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster,
04:13whose existence has not yet been proven.
04:16In 1983, a scientist who visited the region
04:20learned that an old man had managed to catch the mysterious worm.
04:24He also learned that there was a nest nearby.
04:28The scientist bravely approached the hole in the sand
04:31and put his hand inside.
04:33A giant creature dragged him, and he was never seen again.
04:37I'm kidding, he actually found a moat of Mongolian sand.
04:41It is a rattlesnake, not venomous,
04:44with small eyes and gray-brown scales.
04:47He showed it to the inhabitants of the region to find out if it was really the monster of the legend.
04:51And it seems that everyone has responded by the affirmative.
04:55Most Mongols who know of the existence of the worm
04:58firmly believe in its reality.
05:00So if the people of the country commonly say that this monster is a worm,
05:03it is by a kind of shortcut.
05:05In many Mongolian cultures,
05:07this word has been used for centuries to designate any animal deemed dangerous,
05:11in particular snakes, even those that are not venomous.
05:16After all, it is not necessarily a worm in the proper sense.
05:20Worms are soft,
05:21but a creature living in the rough desert of Gobi should have a fairly resistant skin,
05:26closer to that of a snake or a kind of lizard without legs.
05:30None of these creatures can project electricity or spit acid,
05:34as is said of the intestinal worm.
05:36But some snakes, like cobras,
05:38can spit a very dangerous venom for humans.
05:41If it were real,
05:43our creature would have a spine
05:45and explorers would probably have discovered bones or other traces of the same kind.
05:50However, fossils are indeed found throughout the Gobi desert.
05:54Scientists have found there representatives of more than 80 groups of dinosaurs
05:58over the last 100 years.
06:01This is where, for example,
06:02the first eggs of dinosaurs were discovered.
06:06And that completely changed what scientists believed to know
06:10about these great animals of the past.
06:13It was the first proof that they laid eggs.
06:15Over the next two years,
06:17the same team of researchers exhumed more than a hundred fossils of dinosaurs
06:21that were transported to the American Museum of Natural History,
06:25where you can still see them today.
06:27Some of them swam in the sea of the cretaceous
06:30that was found there about 71 million years ago.
06:33They looked like our modern birds.
06:36The mystery of the intestinal worm is still not solved.
06:39But there is another riddle that scientists have managed to elucidate.
06:43In the 13th century,
06:44a famous traveler named Marco Polo
06:47crossed the Gobi desert.
06:49He thought he heard mysterious noises,
06:51sounds produced by musical instruments such as drums.
06:55He talks about it in his book.
06:56According to him, these were tormented spirit voices.
06:59Modern scientists call them singing sands.
07:04Contrary to the crackling that can be heard
07:06when walking on a beach of sand,
07:09these sounds of the desert are much more powerful,
07:11like those of a musical instrument playing deep and obsessive notes.
07:15Over the years,
07:16people have come up with all kinds of ideas about the origin of these sounds,
07:20such as the presence of underground water
07:21or wind that would make the sand vibrate.
07:24However, this phenomenon is specific to certain dunes,
07:27and scientists have long sought to understand why.
07:30Sometimes, the wind can cause a small avalanche,
07:33and you can then hear this strange music.
07:36But this phenomenon is rare.
07:38To study it,
07:39scientists had to help the dunes to sing,
07:43climbing to the top,
07:44then letting themselves slide on their backs using their hands and feet
07:48to push the sand down.
07:50As the sand crumbled,
07:52the sound began to be heard,
07:55then became more and more powerful.
07:57Scientists even felt vibrations in their hands.
08:00They therefore discovered
08:02that for a dune to sing,
08:04a certain number of things must occur.
08:08The grains of sand must have the right shape.
08:10The dune must be large and the sand must be very dry.
08:13No singing after the rain.
08:15Inside the dune,
08:17there must be a hard layer of compacted sand
08:19that acts like a giant speaker.
08:21This layer makes the sound waves bounce,
08:24making the noise more and more intense,
08:26and creating an enchanting melody
08:28that fills the entire air of the desert.
08:31And this is the mystery of the resolved musical dunes.
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