Why do turtles do the ‘Superman pose'?
For some turtles, it's basking or the 'Superman pose' that helps keep their bodies at the right temperature and much more. According to Everglades National Park in southern Florida, Florida redbelly turtles (Pseudemys nelsoni) are often seen with their limbs and/or necks stretched out in order to soak up as much sunlight as possible. It appears to work similarly to yoga in humans, with several benefits. It can warm up their bodies, boost their digestion, help make Vitamin D3 for stronger shells and bones, and importantly helps prevent infection.
Basking helps the turtles dry out their shells, which can keep dangerous parasites from attaching. Ectoparasites–or harmful organisms located on the outside of an animal–like leeches can cause anemia in turtles, according to Canada's Think Turtle Conservation Initiative. Since being out in the direct sunlight is not a great environment for the leeches, they will go away and leave the turtles alone.
While you may have been taught that all reptiles are cold-blooded and mammals are warm-blooded, there is more nuance than that in the animal kingdom. Birds, mammals, and some fish (including some living and extinct shark species) are considered endotherms. This means that they maintain a constant body temperature that is independent of their environment. Humans also fall into this endothermic camp.
[ Related: Turtle's mysterious injury caused by a golf ball. ]
Other fish species, amphibians, and reptiles like turtles are considered ectotherms. As an ectotherm, a turtles' body temperature changes alongside the environment around them. To help regulate their body temperature, turtles will bask on logs, fallen trees, rocks, and other surfaces in the sunlight with their limbs stretched out. Having access to safe basking sites in lakes, ponds, or marshes is crucial for this reason. Some snapping turtles will try to bask on hot asphalt, which can increase their risk of getting run over by a car.
Since basking is a completely normal activity for turtles, it's important to safely observe them from a distance and leave them alone. However, if a turtle shows signs of distress, including heavy bleeding, injuries to their shell, or disorientation, call a local animal rescue or veterinarian's office and get their instructions on what to do.
This story is part of Popular Science's Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you've always wanted to know? Ask us.
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Yahoo
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100 years ago, scientists thought we'd be eating food made from air
In the early 1920s, on the left bank of the Seine just outside Paris, a small laboratory garden bloomed on a plot of land sandwiched between the soaring Paris Observatory and the sprawling grounds of Chalais Park. Unlike a typical garden filled with well-groomed plants and the smell of fresh-turned soil, this garden had an industrial feel. Dubbed 'the Garden of Wonders' by a contemporary journalist, the plot was lined with elevated white boxes fed with water from large glass canisters. Nearby greenhouses included equally unusual accessories. But it's what happened inside the low-slung laboratory buildings that made this garden so wondrous. In August 1925, Popular Science contributing writer Norman C. McCloud described how Daniel Berthelot—a decorated chemist and physicist from France—was conducting revolutionary 'factory-made vegetable' experiments in his Garden of Wonders. Berthelot, son of Marcellin Berthelot, a renowned 19th century chemist and French diplomat, was using the garden to expand upon his father's groundbreaking work. Starting in 1851, the elder Berthelot began creating synthetic organic compounds, such as fats and sugars (he coined the name 'triglyceride'), from inorganic compounds like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. It was a revolutionary first step toward artificial food. '[The younger] Berthelot already has produced foodstuffs artificially by subjecting various gases to the influence of ultra-violet light,' wrote McCloud. 'These experiments,' he added, quoting Berthelot, 'show that by means of light, vegetable foods can be manufactured from air gases.' But Berthelot's experiment didn't exactly catch on. A century later, most food is still grown the traditional way—by plants—but the idea of manufacturing food in controlled, factory environments has been gaining ground. In fact, Berthelot's revolutionary idea may finally be bearing fruit—just not in the way he imagined. A revolution in food chemistry Berthelot never fully accomplished his goal of trying to artificially reproduce what plants do naturally. Nonetheless, his experiments, as sensational as they might seem today, would have been considered quite plausible in 1925. That's because his father's discoveries had unleashed a revolution in chemistry and a tidal wave of optimism about the future of food. By the 1930s, chemists had begun synthesizing everything from basic nutrients, like vitamins, to medicines, like aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), to food additives, such as artificial thickeners, emulsifiers, colors, and flavors. In an interview for McClure's magazine in 1894 dubbed 'Foods in the Year 2000,' Berthelot's father boldly predicted that all foods would be artificial by the year 2000. 'The epicure of the future is to dine upon artificial meat, artificial flour, and artificial vegetables,' wrote Henry Dam for McClure's, articulating Marcellin Berthelot's vision. 'Wheat fields and corn fields are to disappear from the face of the earth. Herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, and droves of swine will cease to be bred because beef and mutton and pork will be manufactured direct[ly] from their elements.' Welcome to the Garden of Wonders Such was the vision that the younger Berthelot was pursuing in his Garden of Wonders. His goal, he told McCloud, was to produce 'sugar and starch from the elements without the intervention of living organisms.' To achieve this, Berthelot envisioned a factory with 'glass tanks of great capacity.' Gases would be pumped into the tanks, and 'suspended from the ceiling [would] be lamps producing the rays of ultra-violet light.' Berthelot imagined that when the chemical elements combined 'through the glass walls of the tank we shall see something in the nature of a gentle snowfall that will accumulate on the floor of the tanks…our finished product—vegetable starches and vegetable sugars created in a faithful reproduction of the works of nature.' By 1925, he had succeeded in using light and gas (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen) to create the basic compound formamide, which is used to produce sulfa drugs (a kind of synthetic antibiotic) and other medicines as well as industrial products. But his progress toward reproducing photosynthesis ended there. Berthelot died just two years after McCloud's story ran in Popular Science, in 1927, without ever realizing his dream. Despite the bold predictions of the time, producing food from only air and light was wildly aspirational in 1925, if for no other reason than photosynthesis was poorly understood. The term had only been coined a few decades earlier when Charles Barnes, an influential American botanist, lobbied for a more precise description of a plant's internal mechanisms than the generic 'assimilation' then in favor. Chlorophyll had been discovered in the prior century, but what happened at a cellular level in plants remained largely theoretical until the 1950s. Although Berthelot may have been onto something with his experiments, adding to the momentum that became the artificial food industry, he was a long way from replicating what comes naturally to plants. We still are, but recent discoveries may have enabled a workaround—depending on your definition of 'food.' A modern answer to Berthelot's innovative garden From vertical indoor farms to hydroponics to genetically modified crops, since the 1960s commercial agriculture has been focused on coaxing more yield from fewer resources, including land, water, and nutrients. The drive began when Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, an American biologist, helped spark the Green Revolution by selectively breeding a grain-packed, dwarf variety of wheat. The theoretical limit of that revolutionary goal would liberate food production from traditional agriculture altogether, eliminating all resources except air and light—Berthelot's original vision. In the last century, we've inched toward creating food from nothing, making progress by teasing apart the incredibly complex biochemical pathways associated with plant physiology. But if we've learned anything since Berthelot's experiments, it's that photosynthesis—what plants are naturally programmed to do—can't be easily replicated industrially. But that hasn't stopped a handful of companies from trying. In April 2024, Solar Foods opened a factory in Vantaa, Finland—a sleek facility where workers monitor large tanks filled with atmospheric gases. Inside the tanks, water transforms into a protein-rich slurry. Dehydrated, the slurry becomes a golden powder packed with protein and other nutrients, ready to be turned into pasta, ice cream, and protein bars. The powdery substance, Solein, resembles Berthelot's vision, as does the factory, which uses atmospheric gases to enable 'food production anywhere in the world,' according to a 2025 company press release, 'as production is not dependent on weather, climate conditions, or land use.' But the similarities with Berthelot's vision end there. Solar Foods may not require land or plants to produce food, but their technology derives from a living organism. Using a form of fermentation, it relies on a microbe to digest air and water to produce protein. Related Archival Stories 100 years ago, scientists predicted we'd live to 1,000 years old 100 years ago, the battle for television raged A century ago, suspended monorails were serious mass-transit contenders 100 years of deep-sea filmmaking and ocean exploration 100 years of aliens: From Mars beavers to little gray men The U.S.-based company Kiverdi uses a similar microbial fermentation process, first devised by NASA as far back as the 1960s for deep space travel, to convert carbon dioxide into protein. Austria-based Arkeon Technologies has developed its own microbial fermentation process to also produce food from carbon dioxide without the need for land or other nutrients. Microbial fermentation may represent a promising new chapter in synthetic foods, but don't expect tomatoes or corn to materialize from thin air anytime soon—it's not artificial photosynthesis. While Berthelot's understanding of photosynthesis was primitive a century ago, he was ahead of his time in many ways, and his vision was remarkably prescient. Although we still haven't figured out how to replicate photosynthesis chemically—literally growing fruits and vegetables as plants do from air and light—it's worth acknowledging the strides we've made in just the last decade: Companies like Arkeon Technologies and Kiverdi may help remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while offering solutions to future food shortages. Or they may not. Only the next century will tell. Solve the daily Crossword
Geek Tyrant
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Behind-the-Scenes Video Revealing How SUPERMAN's Most Criticized Flight Shot Was Filmed — GeekTyrant
James Gunn has cleared the air on one of Superman 's most talked-about moments, revealing exactly how the controversial barrel-roll flying shot was pulled off. In a new behind-the-scenes video shared on Instagram, Gunn shows David Corenswet strapped into a practical rig on a soundstage at Trilith Studios. The actor is being physically spun by a crew member to simulate the dynamic mid-air roll, while massive LED screens project a snowy mountain backdrop filmed on location in Svalbard, Norway. 'On the stage at Trilith shooting the barrel roll through the mountains. All the plates were shot previously in Svalbard. 7.26.24,' Gunn wrote in the caption. The footage confirms a mix of old-school practical work and cutting-edge digital environments, shutting down earlier theories that the shot was entirely CG. This moment became a flashpoint back when it debuted in a Superman TV spot earlier this year. Some fans criticized the sequence for looking 'off,' even claiming Corenswet's face had been digitally replaced. Gunn addressed those claims head-on months ago, writing, 'There is absolutely zero CG in his face. People's faces can look different when you put a wide-angle lens up close. The background plate in Svalbard is 100% real, as is David.' Now, the new video offers proof. What looked like pure CGI to many was actually Corenswet on a practical rig with real-world elements integrated into the shot. Gunn's reveal highlights the creative process behind bringing Superman's flight to life in a way that feels tangible. It's a fascinating look at how the film blends practical effects with advanced tech, staying true to the cinematic ambition Gunn promised from the start.
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