The
desolate Gobi Desert is said to be the home of a mysterious,
deadly creature called Allghoi khorkhoi, also
known as the Mongolian death worm. It is described as a
fat, bright red snakelike animal measuring two to four feet in
length, which is vividly likened to a cow's intestine. In fact,
the name Allghoi khorkhoi means "intestine worm." The
death worm is so feared among the people of Mongolia that
many consider the mere mention of its name bad luck, and it
is attributed with the dramatic ability to kill people and
animals instantly at a range of several feet. It is believed that
the worm sprays an immensely lethal poison, or that it
somehow transmits high electrical charges into its victims.
the
death worm
The foremost investigator of the Mongolian death worm is
Czech author Ivan Mackerle, who first learned about the
creature from a female student from Mongolia. After
Mackerle told her about a diving expedition he had made in
search of the Loch Ness Monster, she told him in a
conspiratorial whisper, "We, too, have a horrible creature
living in Mongolia. We call it the Allghoi khorkhoi monster,
and it lives buried in the Gobi Desert sand dunes. It can kill a
man, a horse, even a camel."
Intrigued, Mackerle set out to learn more about this
Mongolian monster, but information on the topic was very
hard to come by. As he would soon learn, this was primarily
because most Mongolians were afraid to discuss the death
worm. In addition, the Communist government of Mongolia
had kept the nation isolated, and outlawed the search for
Allghoi khorkhoi, which the government considered a "fairy
tale." Communism collapsed in Mongolia in 1990, and the
new political climate provided Mackerle the freedom to
mount an expedition to the country's desert wastes to hunt
for the worm.
Mackerle and his colleagues befriended some Mongolian
nomads who were willing to discuss the death worm, after a
couple of bottles of Mongolian vodka loosened their
tongues. They said that the worm squirts an acidic liquid that
immediately makes anything it touches turn yellow and
corroded. The nomads also said that the color yellow
attracts the Allghoi khorkhoi. They told a story of a young
boy who was playing outside with a yellow toy box, a death
worm crawled inside. When the boy touched the worm, he
was killed instantly. The boy's parents found his body and a
wavy trail leading away in the sand. They knew what had
happened and followed the trail to kill the worm, but it killed
them instead.
Mackerle's group also encountered an old woman named
Puret who reluctantly agreed to discuss the worm. "I have
never personally seen the Allghoi khorkhoi," she said, "but I
have heard much about it. It is said to move about under the
sand, and when it wants to kill someone, it moves half its
length out of the sand. It starts to inflate. The bubble on its
body keeps getting larger, and, in the end, the poison squirts
out from it."
If the Mongolian death worm is real, it's highly unlikely that it
is literally a worm. Annelids and similar invertebrates are
unable to survive in a brutally hot and dry climate like the
Gobi desert, because their bodies cannot retain moisture and
they would rapidly die of dessication. It has been suggested
that Allghoi khorkhoi might be a worm that has adapted
some sort of cuticle membrane to hold in moisture, but a
more reasonable candidate would be a snake or other
reptile.
Mackerle has posited that the creature might be a skink, a
strange variety of lizard whose nondescript head is hard to
distinguish from its tail. Skinks also live buried under desert
sands. But they have four stubby legs and scales, unlike the
reportedly smooth-bodied death worm. Mackerle has also
suggested that it could be a type of lizard called the worm
lizard, although that species is not poisonous. Among lizards,
only the Mexican beaded lizard and the gila monster possess
poisonous venom, but they do not squirt it, and their venom
definitely is not instantly lethal on contact.
Another possibility is that the death worm is a member of the
cobra family called the death adder. This species has an
appearance similar to the descriptions of the Allghoi
khorkhoi, and it does spray its venom. But although the
death adder could conceivably survive in the Gobi
environment, they are found only in Australia and New
Guinea.
Then there is the matter of the death worm's reputed ability
to kill its victims from a far distance, without even shooting
venom. Some have proposed that this might be performed
with an electrical shock of some sort. This hypothesis might
have arisen from an association with the electric eel, but the
eel and all similar electricity-discharging animals are fishes,
and none of them could have the ability to live on land, much
less in a desert. Most likely, the "death from a distance"
component of the Allghoi khorkhoi legend is an
exaggeration based on fear.
And the death worm itself is most likely a fiction based on
some desert-dwelling snake or reptile, which is not truly as
deadly as its reputation would suggest. Unless, of course, it
really is a species that's never been identified before.
Admittedly, any animal that can instantly kill anyone who
tries to observe it would stand a good chance at escaping
scientific classification.
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