The Art of Oddworld Inhabitants, p. 26, para. 4:
There is a lovely paragraph here that explains how few character and environment designs are actually used, but the unused ones ‘remain part of the unseen Oddworld Universe’. The Elum trap survived the process of iteration all the way to being in gameplay, which is pretty good going. But yes, it not having been seen in any canonical capacity makes unknown the details of its presence on Oddworld.
Personally, I imagine Elums would actually be caught in the same kind of trap as the bear Scrab trap that nabs Munch. Even as far back as 2001, there were opinions that the Elum trap doesn’t seem very Oddworldy, and I rather agree. Oddworld should limit its sci‐fi qualities.
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