When are Pterotrachea finally going to go viral? How does anyone look at this animal and not flip their shit? I first saw them in a BBC documentary when I was a toddler and I still can’t believe a real thing evolved like this, but somehow as soon as I’m done thinking about them they just quietly retire to the background of my memory.
Multiple divers say that they have a tendency to follow you around when they see you. :) :) :)
Anatomical guide by request! This animal is technically a snail, but here’s how the parts of its body match up to a more typical snail:
They look like relatively ordinary snails early on, or at least in embryonic development, but as they mature the shell reduces, the mouth stretches out into a proboscis, and the foot flattens into a fin that steers it through the water “upside-down.”
It also happens to have EXTREMELY advanced eyeballs for a gastropod!
The Gimli Glider is one of those stories where every aspect sounds more fake than the last and yet it all actually happened.
-A passenger plane was underloaded with fuel because Canada had just converted to the metric system and everyone supposed to double check their numbers got it wrong. -When the plane ran out of fuel they were too far away to make it to an in-service airport and had to head towards the Gimli military base. Which was shuttered. -They were coming in to fast due to a lack of flaps control and had to perform a series of slips (as shown in the video above) to slow down, basically drifting a giant passenger plane. -As they come down they realized that just because Gimli’s been decommissioned doesn’t mean it’s abandoned because a bunch of people are having drag races on the runway they’re about to need. -Despite everything they managed to land safely and no one was killed or even hurt which is why it’s one of the best air disasters to meme on.
TheWikipedia page on this is fantastic and my favorite line from it is “Flying with all engines out was never expected to occur, so it had never been covered in training.”
