The Star Wars movies, comics, and stories, are filled with so many fictional characters and monsters that it’s hard to keep up.
As there are so many, it is hard to have all the information on some of them, one of these being the Sarlaac.
For those of you who aren’t aware, the Sarlaac is were carnivorous, dangerous creatures that were located on Tatooine and other plants in the galaxy.
You may remember this creature as a large mouth that protrudes from the ground, it had its first debut in Return Of The Jedi in the 1983 movie.
As there is not much told to us in the movies about these terrifying creatures, this article is going to provide you with a few interesting facts about the biology and appearance of the Sarlaac.
They’re Not Always Buried In The Ground
As you can see from their appearance in the movie, the creature resembles a massive mouth that protrudes from the ground. However, they do not always live buried in the ground.
Before reaching adulthood, these creatures roam around like most carnivores, and they are related to rathtars, who also have large mouths and tentacles.
However, both creatures adapted to their own environments, and the sarlaac became the larger and least mobile creature of its family.
They Have Several Stomachs
These creatures digest food for over a thousand years, so it is no surprise that they have more than one stomach.
They also have many rows of teeth as well as tentacles, which makes falling inside this gaping mouth a seriously terrifying punishment.
They Aren’t Adults Until They Reach 30,000 Years Of Age
When someone gets eaten by a sarlaac, it takes one thousand years to be properly digested in their stomach.
Therefore, it is not surprising that these creatures do not reach adulthood until they are 30,000 years old.
That also means that for 30,000 years, these creatures are roaming around and hunting their prey, before burying themselves in the ground.
They Inflict Physical And Mental Torture
As if falling into their pit of doom isn’t enough, these creatures relish torturing their victims physically and mentally.
Victims are injected with immobilizing neurotoxins before being thrown into their mouths.
These neurotoxins extract nutrients from the body and work at keeping them alive a lot longer than they would normally.
This means that as the sarlaac is digesting the body, the victim is completely conscious, feeling all aspects of pain.
They Are Tall
These creatures begin their lives as spores and then grow with age.
Once they are mature, they bury themselves 100 meters into the sand below the surface, and they feed on creatures who are unfortunate enough to fall into their mouths or get thrown into them as punishment. The largest known sarlacc specimen in the galaxy was from planet Felucia, the Felucia sarlacc.
Their Reproduction Process Is Explosive
In order for sarlaacs to continue to live, they must reproduce. They reproduce before they bury themselves into the ground.
A male Sarlaac will feed on a female like a parasite. As this happens, the female’s size decreases and the male grows until he can’t grow anymore.
Once he has reached the largest size, he will explode and send lots of little spores into the air.
These little spores then become sarlaacs and repeat the process.
The Sarlaac Is An Apex Predator
The Sarlaac almost has no natural enemies, making it an apex predator. With that being said, there are a couple of creatures that can eat a Sarlaac.
These creatures live on different planets, which means that there are different creatures that can eat them depending on where they live.
These include the krayt dragon on Tatooine, and the gouka dragon on Aargonar.
Their Insides Can Be Weaponized
The reason why sarlaacs take so long to digest their victims is because they have very slow acting stomach acid. This acid can be harvested and used for weapons.
This is seen in the canon comic called Life Day #1 where Han Solo and Chewbacca purchased some explosives from the Trandoshans.
These explosives were lined with the acid from the stomach of a saralaac, and resulted in making the explosives chemical and corrosive.
Final Thoughts
The Sarlaac is probably one of the most terrifying creatures you can find in the Star Wars movies, books, and comics.
Being thrown into the mouth of one would mean you would endure thousands of years of torture, as neurotoxins were injected into victims.
So they would be kept alive in order to feel the extreme pain of being eaten.
If that wasn’t enough, these creatures would digest their food for thousands of years, so victims would feel this excruciating pain until they had been fully digested.
Before burrowing themselves 100 meters below the surface, these creatures would roam around and hunt their prey for 30,000 years.
Brad Burnie is the founder of Starships.com. He loves all video game genres. In his spare time, he loves reading, watching movies, and gaming
