The Monstrefact: Life on Star Wars' Utapau

and the death of the Jedi Order. It's a dark tale for many younger viewers, perhaps the first tragic story arc they ever saw, and one that still ruminates on the state of our own world. Since the film is perhaps fresh on many listeners' minds, I thought today might be a good day to turn our attention to the fauna of the planet Urdapao, where Obi Wan Kenobi finally hunts down General Grievous. Far from just another desert or forest world, Utipaal is delightfully weird and fittingly morose for

the darkest Star Wars film entry. As described in Star Wars Galactic Maps, written by Emily Fortune, It's a dry, windswept world quote pock marked with giant sinkholes into which the oceans drain, and its underground cities built from millions of animal bones. Matthew Stover, in his novelization of the film, describes these sinkholes as being the size of inverted mountains,

the interior walls riddled with industry and urbanization. The planet is home to two sentient species, the diminutive uta, serving as the planet's labor cast, and the tall, gaunt, carnivorous pollens.

According to Star Wars Alien Archive, written by Natalie Club and Katrina Palante, the long lived pollens originally lived on the planet's surface till a climate forced them underground to live with the Utah, but given their sensitive vision, the pollens were more than happy to abandon the surface world for the pits. Likewise, their sensitive hearing required them to wear special dampeners, perhaps due to the loud echoes of

life in the sink whole cities of Utapao. The pollens in the Utah domesticated at least two different native reptile species to serve as their steeds, the winged dactylians that we might compare to some of Earth's larger terosaurs and the scampering verractyls both are adept at navigating the sinkholes of Utapal, the dactylians by flight and the use of the pit's thermal updrafts, and the verractyls via their wide gate and five toed feet. Obi Wan famously makes use

of a verractyl in his pursuit of general grievous. We're also told that a huge noss monsters live in the planet's sink whole bounds surface lakes and rivers. Here on Earth, we also have sinkhole ecosystems. As Laura Bicker describes in a twenty twenty four article for BBC, China's giant sinkholes are a tourist hit, but ancient forests insider at risk. Quote. These cavities in the Earth trapped time, preserving unique, delicate

ecosystems for centuries. These environments, generally caused by the dissolution of soluble bedrock like limestone, by ground water or even underground rivers, have been found to contain unique organisms, especially plants, and sometimes serve as naturally protected habitats for endangered flora and fauna. So while we may often think of sinkholes as natural pitfalls of destruction, sometimes harboring the bones of

animals that fell inside them. They can also serve as refuges, so it's perhaps fitting that the sinkholes of Uodapaal came to serve as a last redoubt for much of the

planet's life. It's also interesting, though perhaps unintended, that the planet's decimated surface and life sustaining sinkholes resembles the state of life on the republic slash Imperial capital world of Coruscant, where in place of biological life, one single vast city covers the surface of the planet, and deep vertical ventilation shafts dive down to starports and an entire undercity far beneath. During the days of the Galactic Empire, these depths even

harbored some of the remaining embers of the Rebellion. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster, Fact, The Artifact, or Animaliustupendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.