What trippy worm ooze can teach us about saving nature

When Frank Herbert penned the sprawling space opera Dune, he was thinking a lot about ecology. He was also experimenting with psilocybin, the natural psychedelic found in "magic mushrooms." It's no wonder, then, that Herbert dreamt up a galactic Imperium that depends on the trip-inducing ooze of a fearsome predator—the giant sandworms of Arrakis—for interstellar travel.

Hallucinogenic worm slime, better known as "the spice," is often compared to oil. It's easy to see why: It literally fuels the economy of the Imperium, in addition to having countless ancillary uses, from fiber-making to sacred rituals. Like oil, the spice is mined industrially by a vast colonial empire more concerned with power than planetary protection or human rights. Dune's understanding of the politics surrounding natural resource exploitation—and the existential risks that come with it—make the 1965 novel-turned-hit film series feel like an incisive commentary on the present.

Listen to my NPR interview on this

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Tuscon-based herpetologist Robert Villa agrees. Villa is an expert on the Sonoran desert toad (Bufo alvarius), an animal that, like Dune's supersized sandworms, secretes a substance people prize for its mind-altering abilities. Inside the toad's venom is 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful hallucinogen also known as the "God molecule." Since experimental psychedelic users first freebased the stuff in the 1980s, the mystique around the toad has grown tremendously. Today, toad tripping is championed by celebrities and wellness influences who've rebranded it 'Bufo therapy' and given it an apocryphal origin story.

In a recent conversation for a National Geographic article on the science of spice, Villa and I discussed what rising popularity of the toad's venom means for the animal's future (probably nothing good), parallels between the Sonoran desert toad and Arrakis' sandworms, and why Dune is a timely tale for today.

Villa graciously agreed to allow The Science of Fiction to run the full interview. You can read it below, condensed and lightly edited for clarity: